Where to Start with Vendor Selection

By Senior Consultant, Edward Goldthwait

In the crowded landscape of financial technology solutions, selecting the right vendor is one of the most critical decisions your firm will make. It’s not just about finding a product that works – it’s about choosing a partner that will underpin your business operations for years to come.

Get it wrong, and the impact can be far-reaching. It’s a high-stakes strategic decision that will influence your operational efficiency, integration capabilities, and ability to scale for years to come. Some firms find themselves forced to start again; an expensive and time-consuming reset that sets transformation back by years.

That’s why an independent consultancy can be so valuable at this stage. They’ve been through the process many times before, understand how to structure it properly, and can offer an unbiased view of the full market landscape. That independent perspective helps remove internal or vendor bias to ensure decisions are made for the right reasons — and that the outcome genuinely serves the long-term needs of your business.

Dozens of vendors may respond to your RFP, but identifying which solution genuinely aligns with your company’s needs, requires a structured approach that prioritizes transparency and objective evaluation.

Getting this decision right is essential, so we’ve set out below how to get this right.

Understand Your Needs: The Foundation of Success

Before evaluating any vendor, it’s crucial to first define and document your unique business requirements. Start by gathering and refining requirements for your specific technology need, whether that’s an order management system, accounting, data infrastructure, or other system. This process involves engaging stakeholders across the organization to surface both explicit requirements and underlying challenges that may not be immediately obvious. It often surfaces issues beyond the original brief – for example, fragmented workflows or data dependencies that may limit how well new systems perform. Capturing these early helps avoid false starts later.

Steps include:
• Hold Discovery Workshops
• Create Requirement Documentation

Develop an RFP/RFI: Documenting Key Requirements

Once your organization’s needs are documented and approved, the next crucial step is to translate those requirements into a clear and accurate Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Information (RFI). The quality and precision of these documents is critical to the value of the vendor responses. Involving an experienced external partner at this point can help ensure requirements are realistic, prioritised, and expressed in a way that vendors can respond to meaningfully.

Steps include:
• Create Bespoke RFP/RFI Development
• Ensure Alignment to Industry Best Practices

Strategic Distribution: Reaching the Right Vendors

An RFP or RFI is only as effective as the vendors who receive it. Success requires market knowledge and industry connections to identify which providers specialize in your sector, possess the technical capabilities you need, and are appropriately sized for your organization.
Engaging an independent consultancy at this stage can add real value. With no vendor bias and a deep view across the market, they can help you identify the best-suited providers and manage distribution to ensure your RFP reaches the right audience from the outset. This not only broadens the range of viable options but can also surface emerging vendors you might otherwise overlook.

Steps include:
• Identify Initial Vendor Selection
• Manage Document Distribution

RFP/RFI Review and Scoring: Data-Driven Decision Making

Vendor responses can vary significantly in format and detail, making apples-to-apples comparison difficult. A standardized scoring framework tackles this by weighing technical capabilities, functional alignment, and commercial viability equally to ensure vendors are evaluated fairly and objectively. This not only helps compare vendors objectively but also provides a clear audit trail for stakeholders – vital when justifying decisions internally or to regulators.

Steps included:
• Quantitative and Qualitative Response Scoring
• Custom Evaluation Matrices
• Summary Reporting

Facilitated Demos: Putting Vendors to the Test

After narrowing the pool of vendors, run scripted demonstrations with your top vendor candidates. These sessions, ideally hosted at your site with your evaluation team, should focus on your organisations specific use cases rather than standard sales presentations.

Steps included:
• Create Custom Test Scripts
• Host Interactive Demonstrations
• Objective Observation

Final Selection and Contracting: From Shortlist to Signature

Once demonstrations are complete, the final selection phase requires building stakeholder consensus and negotiating contract terms. This critical stage determines not just which vendor you choose, but the commercial and legal framework that will govern the relationship.
An experienced consultancy can add real value here, helping you understand what a fair deal looks like, where there’s room to negotiate, and which terms are non-negotiable. Having managed many similar contracts, they know what to include, what to avoid, and how to strike the right balance between cost, delivery, and risk.

Steps included:
• Consensus-Building on Solution
• Negotiation Support
• Seamless Handover

Getting Your Vendor Selection Right

Too many technology implementations fail not because of the vendor’s capabilities, but because the selection process wasn’t robust enough. Unclear requirements, subjective evaluations, and rushed decisions often lead to misaligned solutions and costly course corrections.
A structured, objective approach that prioritises clarity, alignment, and accountability protects against these pitfalls.

At Liqueo, we help buy-side firms to navigate technology vendor selection from requirements to contract. Our consultants bring deep domain expertise, proven frameworks, and an independent perspective that helps clients make confident, evidence-based decisions.

Let’s find the right technology partner for your business. Get in touch.

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