In choosing a new software solution or website for your business do you really know what you are looking for?
Many businesses in the past would hire software consultants or developers to build a software package or computer solution tailored to meet the needs of these businesses. The solutions were usually expensive, took a long time and had ongoing software maintenance costs.
Now there is a range of software for every business and process and more is being marketed everyday. There are 1000's of software platforms or programs that will assist your business operations, but how do you go about choosing the right software or solution provider?
There are a series of steps that each business needs to address before they should invest in a software solutions or vendor.
Depending on the reasons for wanting to purchase new or upgrade existing software solutions, a business must address a range of issues. All business need to fully understand and be able to either document or translate their operations to determine if a software solution can meet their needs and what are the costs associated with this. All business when looking at implementing new software must define a reasonable budget depending on the type of solution you are looking to implement.
If a business has unique operations and are looking at replacing their entire payroll, customer relationship management, accounting and operational systems, then obviously this needs careful planning and managing to ensure that the impacts to staff and your operations are kept to a minimum. Many times businesses are caught up in the sales gimics provided by software vendors and then stuck with a software package that doesnt quite fit their business and they usually implement alternative solutions to fill in the gaps.
If you know exactly the type of solution you are looking for then my suggesting is to look for software that is being delivered to exactly your market. For instance, if you are running an online shopping cart, then don't try and implement a Blog and add the shopping cart later, or if your business is distributing gas cylinders then finding a gas cylinder tracking system is what you should be looking for.
However, the trick is you must identify and spend a reasonable about of time reviewing your requirements and ensuring that you understand exactly what the software needs to address. If you dont have the capabilities to determine this, then I recommend you engage in a software consultant that can provide assistance in finding the right solution for you.
2. Set a budget and reasonable timeframe
All businesses need to set a budget when looking at purchasing or implementing new software. Software can be free or can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Niche software or software exclusively written for a purpose obviously costs more than software that has been distributed to 100s or even 1000s of customers. You should set your budget based on how much is the software going to save your money or what part of the business cannot operate without it. You need to perform a bit of cost benefit analysis to ensure that you are not over capitalizing on software and impacting on your bottom line. However, if the software was going to save you employing additional staff then you need to consider that it may cost that much to implement, but ongoing will save your business lots of money. You need to be realistic and expect that you get what you paid for. If you consider using free software, then you take a major risk that it will not meet the need and soon you will either run into limitations or problems such as being hacked.
3. Spend the time to research
Research both about the product and the vendor as some vendors are happy to provide you with a demo version and some vendor's require huge upfront fees just to have their software installed. If you cant get your hands on a demo version of any software package, then my recommendation is to not use it. So many times, customers have had to modify their business processes or look for alternative solutions when they find that the software package they have just spent thousands of dollars on, does not perform some of the most critical requirements for their business to operate. What usually happens then, is the customers are forced to have custom solutions integrated and usually and at high price.
If you have software developed, you need to consider the long term arrangements between your organisation and the software development company to ensure who will maintain the software once released, what kind of software maintenance and service level arrangement do you require and what does that cost. Are those costs justified? It is no good spending thousands of dollars on a solution, if it is going to cost hundreds of thousands to employ the staff to maintain it.
4. Recommendation
If you do not have a lot of experience with software nor understand exactly what you may require, and are looking at implementing a new solution or software package then my recommendation is that you get good advice from independant consultants that will not be biased towards a particular vendor or package, and that you ensure that your requirements are well understood and documented so that you can ensure the software solution will meet your business requirements and strategic objectives.
Aztek Web Solutions would be pleased to provide you with any assistance in identifying your business requirements, finding a software solution that meets your needs or developing a custom solution for your business
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