Steps to Successfully Changing Your Business Software Part III: Software Selection

Before you've reached the stage of selecting your software, you've thought through and documented what you're looking for.  Therefore, you should already know what you want.  When weighing choices you should follow the guidelines below.

Rely on your own needs analysis.  You should have done a thorough job developing a design for your ideal system.  Software salespersons don't know your business, and they can't do a better job than you in the selection process.  They only know about their own software, and can't know how well it will meet your needs.

Avoid basing your selection decision on canned demos from salespersons.  Ask if you can get demos based on your own specifications.  The pre-developed demos that salespersons present make their software look great, but they almost never tell you anything about how well it will work for you.

Make sure you understand the software you are looking at.  If anything is confusing, that's a warning sign.  Don't assume training is the answer.  You should be selecting the software that comes closest to your ideal design concepts.

Take advantage of free trials.  You should never purchase any software, whether cloud or installable, without first giving it a test drive, if possible.  A lot of software comes with a free trial.

Be sure to weigh the pros and cons between cloud software and software installed in-house.  

Check the scalability of the software to see if it can keep up with possible changes and growth in your business. 

Carefully check the support agreement.  Is 24/7 phone support available?  Will any user support involve a cost?

Try to estimate the true cost of ownership for a package you're looking at. If in-house, how often will you have to upgrade?  How long is a given version supported?

Find out what integration capabilities the software has.  Does it have an API?  An API - or application programming interface - allows anyone with the right programming skills to create custom applications that can interact with, and augment, the software.  Does it have good features for exporting and importing data from various sources?  Does it have built-in integration with such popular office software as Outlook, Excel, and Quickbooks?  If you don't have your own programming expert to help you evaluate these capabilities you should seek a consultant who can do this.  

How much will implementation cost?  Do you plan to migrate data from your existing system into the new one?  How big a job will this be, and how much could it cost?  Moving data into a new system is often overlooked and grossly underestimated in the selection process.  Don't rely on the salespersons for the new software to advise you on this.  They will want to minimize the difficulty, of course.  If you don't have someone working for you who can evaluate this, you should seek the advice of a consultant.

Avoid basing your selection on what other similar businesses use.  Remember every business has unique processes.  Even if another company is in the same industry as yours, it will likely be using a given software package differently from the way you would.  The software might be a good fit for the other company, but not yours. Stick to the ideal design you developed when you analyzed and documented your needs.

While you shouldn't base your selection on what similar businesses use, you should get references or find others who are using a package you are looking at.  Ask them about their customer satisfaction experience.

Always consider combining more than one piece of software.  Any single package has strengths and limitations.  People often look for a single package that will do everything.  It's possible to select two or three inexpensive pieces of software, with different sets of functions, and integrate them.  This way you take advantage of the strengths of each piece.  This combination can be much more powerful than relying on a single piece of software that performs some functions well, but is weak or lacking in others.

Avoid brand new software or a brand new version that hasn't stood the test of time.

For cloud solutions figure on implementing your own data backup scheme.  Also consider what to do during outages.  Always assume you'll have outages.