Pharmaceutical Contract Management Software Vendor Evaluation
The Challenge
A leading investor in expanding technology companies engaged Cumberland to perform an assessment of an emerging commercial and government contracting software vendor. The results of the assessment would determine whether they would provide angel funding to the software company.
Cumberland’s Approach
The goals of the assessment were to evaluate the software’s features and functionalities, to analyze the current and future state of the market and to develop comparisons of potential competitors.
The product assessment, including an in-depth review of system features and functionalities, was conducted to evaluate the effort needed to build required features into the system in order to strongly compete in the market. Overall usability was assessed to determine ease of use and navigation in terms of number of clicks and screens and data accessibility.
Comprehensive technical assessments were performed in the following areas:
- Organization — Current structure of product development and quality assurance teams were analyzed for current state, liabilities, scalability and technical competence.
- Processes and Documentation — Review of SDLC, product management, release schedule and product documentation
- Technology — Current and future technology assessments were conducted for:
- Front End Development Language
- Back End Database & Data Model
- Data Conversion & Integration Architecture
- Alert & Notification Architecture
- Customization Methodology
- Reporting Architecture
- Installation Landscape
Market assessments were performed in the following areas:
- Software vs. Outsourcing — Analysis of how pharma companies of various sizes handle commercial and government contracting. This analysis included a definition of revenue tiers, calculation of the size of each tier and how companies in each tier handle their contracting operations
- Competitive Landscape — Review of the history, current state and future outlook of all competitive software companies
Results
Our client, the investment organization, gained a better understanding of the current market, feature and functionality offerings and the competitive landscape. The software company we evaluated became aware of high-level gaps in its product offering.