Vendor support is sometimes overlooked and can be a critical part of the decision-making process. That is just one area that may require additional money that may not be thoroughly understood.
please I need a respose to this below....
One of the things I saw frequently was not understanding the full costs of how a COTS would affect an organization. As one example one solution was going to require a major upgrade to the memory on the individual computer stations. In addition, a server was needed at each location where the solution was to used. These costs were not known at the time that the contract was signed. There were a number of top-level executives who were not very happy when they discovered how much more money was needed in order to use the solution.
In another instance some of the buildings did not have enough bandwidth to run a newly acquired solution. The issue was that the people making the decision concerning the application solution did not consult the infrastructure team to determine the needs. The solution was unusable at some locations until the bandwidth situation could be resolved.
Have any of you experienced similar challenges? If so, what steps were taken to ensure the challenges and issues were not repeated on future projects?