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How To Evaluate Your Company’s Software Application
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Business New Haven
11/12/2001
By: Mitchell Young
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Remember when selecting software was similar to a religious experience - so much had to be taken on faith?
It didn't matter whether it was a spreadsheet from Microsoft or a custom billing application. Software never seemed finished, and those who “wrote” it were very much part of a new priesthood.
Users experienced frequent crashes, bugs, fixes, waiting for hours on the support line - and that was for mass marketed products.
Eventually, Word was working, everyone was using 1, 2, 3 and dBase and life was almost good. That is, unless you wanted to do more than support operations such as forecasting or word-processing.
If you wanted to use software to actually run your company, finding and developing industry-specific applications remained a real challenge.
Today there are thousands of industry-specific programs, as well as flexible application-generators. But, just as important, there are now software tools and seasoned professionals who can aid fast, high-quality application development.
Our topic, evaluating your company's software needs, is a bit of a misnomer, however. Software applications are no longer an “add-on” to business. For most successful companies they are part and parcel of the “infrastructure” of the business.
With the stakes so high, the challenge of creating your company's software infrastructure is perhaps even more daunting than in the early days of desktop computing.
The solution we recommend is to approach the process with this basic precept in mind: that you are potentially going to transform your company, and you must for better or worse do your “due diligence.”
If you don't know where you are going, any road will take get there.
Setting your goals is the initial step. What are you trying to accomplish? What is the company's vision? Are there new opportunities or special challenges that must be addressed? What are the risks of “staying put for now”?
If you'll be assessing individual problems such as sales or customer support, inventory control, accounting or even a Web site, you must also address process-integration.
Your company already operates in an integrated fashion. A client or sale eventually makes its way to service or production and down the hall to billing. The relative ease of administrative work flow is the hallmark of a well-run and probably profitable company.
Audit the Outside World
Knowing what your competitors are doing, what your customers want and where your vendors are headed is a first step. Understanding the regulatory environment and evolving standards of your industry have also become an essential part of software evaluation.
Numerous companies are finding that major customers now require certain electronic purchasing capabilities. In other industries, such as health care, regulators are mandating security issues. Vendors (and you may become one) are provisioning their purchasing and inventory access online; integrating directly with them can mean increased productivity and reduced costs.
With goal development and external review underway you are in a position to create a “perceived needs” document.
Know Thyself
Conducting an audit of your own company is essential. Solicit formal input from all departments - even those you don't expect to affect. Involve individual users. The effectiveness of any business process will ultimately be measured by the productivity of employees (users).
Map out the operation expected to be affected by defining direct tasks, as well as those related and connected. Track how information flows (or doesn't flow) to reveal how things actually get done.
Identify what information management needs and how much flexibility and timeliness is required.
Determine how well-trained and effective your employees are with your existing systems, and what training needs will they need in a new system.
Determine what information and tools the employees who do the day-to-day work of your business need to make better decisions.
It's What You Don't Know That Will Kill You
Setting goals, generating input, assessing the landscape - all are part of our everyday business work. But to be sure that you create an accurate and useable “as-is” state of the company document, you may require an outside consultant.
An outside consultant may be your best way to understand changing industry trends and standards or to address the needs of the regulatory environment.
For most of us, including IT managers, rapid changes in technology and software development have made it nearly impossible to keep up. The right consultant can help fill in those gaps.
An outsider can also help a company's IT staff get immunized from their reliance on existing loyalties to process, vendors or applications that may sap the competitive advantage of your organization.
You have your “perceived needs,” and you know “what is.” Now, by comparing those states you can create a “gap analysis,” and this process will provide you with your “to be” document, which can become the foundation of an RFP.
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