Step by Step Software Selection Process

There are many software's available in the market and numerous vendors who are willing to give you the required services. But the decision is in your hands and you have to choose the solution which is the best and caters all of your requirements. At this stage, you would probably be asking is there any step by step procedure which I can follow to come up with my final selection. Well, this depends on your organization's needs and requirements. But we can provide you with the points which can very much ease your pain of selection.

How to Proceed

We made an extensive search in effort to get the best possible procedure which can lead you to the solution that you are looking for and have compiled some points which can help you make the final decision of what is being offered to you is worthwhile or not.

In order to reduce the likelihood of an ill-chosen system, you should keep in mind the following points:

• Automation is not the end, but the means to the end of increased business effectiveness.
• Accounting systems do not make decisions; people do.
• Automation will not eliminate poor business decisions, nor will it organize information bottlenecks.
• The single most important asset any company has is its employees, their experience, and their knowledge. Automation must not be allowed to take precedence over people.
• Let your employees know that you are thinking of improving your business process by implementing a new software solution.
• Ask them to list what they think the new software should be able to do to make their jobs easier.

The list of the steps that should be followed are:

• Recognition of Needs
• What Your Current Vendor Can Offer
• Become Knowledgeable
• Your Budget and TimeLine
• Outsourcing-Hiring a Consultant
• Demonstrations of Product Solutions
• Evaluate Product Features
• Talk with Current companies using the system
• Final Decision

Recognition of Needs

Meet with the vendors and ask them to develop a needs analysis this will help you and the vendor get a better understanding of your company, where it is and where you would like it to be.

What Your Current Vendor Can Offer

If you are familiar with a system and are not the first time buyer, then you have to consult with your current vendor about your needs and how they can be catered in the existing system with an upgrade. If the current system can handle the updates and value-added features, then we recommend that you should stick with your solution and ask for these value-added features. This will not only save your implementation and solution cost but will also have a more intangible benefit-time saving. Your staff will not require extensive training and the execution of the software will be done in minimum time. However, if your vendor is not able to satisfy your needs, this is will most probably be the best time to switch to a better solution.

Become Knowledgeable

What you are getting and what is available in the market. This is the major issue that you have to look forward to. If you know the market, the competition and the available solutions, you can easily get what you want. Otherwise you have to accept whatever what your current vendor offers. We recommend that you explore the internet for different solutions or contact other vendors for the possible solutions; also, attending seminars and presentations can help you a lot with the final decision. Make a list of all the products and their features as well as the prices so that you can compare each product with one another. This is a time consuming step but it will greatly help you in your final verdict. The final listing will eliminate the most obvious poor choices as well as the products which are missing some key features and modules.

My Budget and TimeLine

It is important to establish what you think you can afford to spend. Establishing some broad brush milestone dates help keep the project on course. , From our experience the initial budgets are always lower than the actual costs, within a short time period, depending on the scope of the project, you will know what you may need to spend.

Outsourcing-Hiring a Consultant

You can always hire a consultant who can identify you specific problematic areas in the organization and can also suggest what can be done about those areas. But these consultants have some specific solutions names which they constantly repeat and recommend to the user. If you decide to go this route make sure and add the consultants fees to your budget as consultants can be very expensive

Demonstrations of Product Solutions

Assuming that there are one or more vendors whose products you are interested in, it is worthwhile for you to invite them in to demonstrate their product for you. You should provide a list of 10 to 20 items or functions that you want to see that are specifically needed by your business. This will give you the insight of the product itself and will also tell you the level of expertise of the vendor.

Evaluate Product Features

If you find that some of the products are catering your requirements but have one or more features which are nice to have, you can order an evaluation copy of the product for a 30 days trial period. The prototyping of a product achieves a number of objectives. First, it validates the software against your data. It validates the difficulties you may encounter during the conversion stage of implementation. Prototyping allows IT to develop deployment scenarios and determines how expensive the product will be to deploy (make available to users) and support.

Meet With Current Users

Now you think that you have selected a single solution or have narrowed down your list of options to some extend. Now you can get in contact with the users of these systems and ask them how they are using it. Who was the vendor? Is the support sufficient? Does the vendor have the expertise required by the clients? How much time did it take to get accustomed with the software? And most importantly did the vendor come in on budget for what you had contracted him to do.

Are you satisfied with the Current Working of the Solution?

We know that this is quite a laborious and lengthy process but as you are looking for the best solution, a little more effort given will definitely result in a much better option.

Decision

Here is the time for the final decision of what you can get from all the hard work that you have gone through to get to the best possible solution. At this time, you will have a concrete decision which is backed by facts and figures rather than any gut feeling or going-along-with-the-crowd.