Today’s IT sourcing is filled with bias and inefficiencies. Olive is changing that.
“Biasing decisions like this is terrible for both parties. There has to be a better way for buyers to make major IT decisions,” the salesman thought. He knew firsthand just how much bias there was in the process.
That salesman—Olive CEO Chris Heard—had the idea to build an AI-powered IT consultant to help buyers make unbiased IT decisions. After finding the perfect co-founder in Dan Harrison, Olive was born: the first platform purpose-built to help buyers navigate their most important IT decisions.
“There has to be a better way for buyers to make major IT decisions.”
We believe in providing unbiased and fair assessments, ensuring that every decision and recommendation is based solely on objective data and thorough analysis. By prioritizing impartiality, we deliver accurate and trustworthy insights that our clients can rely on to make informed decisions.
We are dedicated to open and honest dialogue with our clients and stakeholders. Our processes, decisions, and communications are clear and accessible, fostering an environment of trust and accountability. Transparency is the cornerstone of our commitment to ethical practices and mutual respect.
We strive to be at the forefront of technological advancement and creative problem-solving. Our commitment to innovation drives us to continually explore new ideas and implement cutting-edge solutions that enhance our clients’ success. Embracing change and fostering a culture of innovation is key to achieving excellence.
Chris and Dan realized that in order to build an AI IT consultant, they would first need to gather the data required to deliver AI insights. To do that, they would need a platform that delivers value today. The most tedious part of the buying process is often identifying and managing the business requirements.
Olive’s first iteration was a robust requirements management platform designed to help streamline this part of the process.
Next, the team set about fleshing out the buying process by expanding functionality further to enable vendor and stakeholder management. Now companies were able to issue full RFPs and RFIs, saving months of research and increasing success rates. No more cat-herding, no more inboxes chock-full of vendor emails—Olive users could be fully in control of the software sourcing process.
Including pricing and early-stage discovery functionality, Olive’s use cases expanded beyond RFIs and RFPs to offer vendor lifecycle management tools, making it a must-have resource for all parts of the software sourcing process.
Now, buyers could use Olive for:
This additional functionality enabled many consulting firms to take advantage of Olive to deliver significantly more value to their clients.
Taking advantage of advances in generative AI, the team incorporated artificial intelligence across the application to help recommend requirements and solutions to potential buyers. The Olive AI now offers a co-pilot in all major IT decisions, guiding them each step of the way with data (not bias).
This functionality gives teams much of the benefit they would get from a third-party consultant, or an internal PMO team, without having to make those capital-intensive investments. Buyers can rest easy knowing they made the right decision, one without vendor influence, while vendors can make a right-fit sale that increases the likelihood of client retention.
After building a wealth of data over the years, Olive can now collate that data to produce detailed reports on top software categories based on real peer information. Olive’s ability to produce these reports without the need for vendor financing enables Olive to deliver the first truly unbiased analyst reports.
“It would be a mistake to drop Olive and go back to the traditional way of selecting software vendors after seeing the value that it brings.”
Olive is essential for strategic digital transformation. If you’re managing digital transformation, or looking to change vendors, you need Olive. Olive is a much-needed tool for evaluating and implementing enterprise technology solutions. It’s a unicorn!
Traditionally, there’s a weakness in selecting technology solutions that deliver impactful, measurable results… With Olive, you take that emotion and bias out of the process, giving you better data to base your decision off.
We are excited about the opportunity to level up, rip and replace our tech stack and ensure that what we’re ripping and replacing it with is the best option for PRMI.
I have seen a good requirements gathering process take anywhere from 2-3 months. With Olive, we completed it in 2 weeks.
Using Olive for our software evaluation engagements has not only helped us be unbiased and objective in our valuations, but it has also helped us build trust with our clients, where they feel that they’ve made the right decision.
Instead of issuing a large formal RFP, we found Olive.
We’ve cut our RFP writing hours in half with Olive. We’ve saved substantial time on vendor scoring and presenting results to staff—Olive handles it all now.
Olive helped us so much and I couldn’t recommend it more.
It would be a mistake to drop Olive and go back to the traditional way of selecting software vendors after seeing the value that it brings.
Chris
Dan
Chris Heard, the CEO and co-founder of Olive Technologies, began his entrepreneurial journey in England with the launch of a portable cocktail bartending service, “Bars in Action.” After kicking off a sales career in insurance in 2009, Chris moved to Vancouver, where he played a pivotal role in the growth of local startup Mobify, initially as the head of business development and later as a senior account executive. From there, Chris led sales teams for various tech companies across the US. In 2018, driven by a vision to revolutionize how enterprises adopt and purchase technology, Chris co-founded Olive Technologies. Building a mission to remove bias, bring transparency, and efficiency to enterprise IT decision making.
Dan Harrison, co-founder and Head of Data Enablement at Olive, leverages his dual expertise in software engineering and sales to drive technological innovation. With a background at Mobify, Yottaa, and Hyperwallet, Dan co-founded Olive to help organizations streamline digital transformation, with the goal of making enterprise technology adoption more efficient and effective. His work focuses on optimizing technology adoption processes for enterprises, ensuring they can efficiently evaluate and integrate new technologies, reducing biases and improving decision-making.
Explore insights into enterprise software sourcing, RFx operations and digital transformation.
