By Marcia Nita Doron, Altico Advisors
Selecting new ERP/accounting software to run your business is a big decision and can be a daunting task. To help you successfully navigate a software selection initiative, has developed a step by step approach.
This is Part I of a 3-part series entitled “The 3 Ps of Software Selection – The Process, the Pitfalls, the Promise.” Part I is a high level view of the basic questions you need to be asking and the basic elements you need to budget for as you work through the . Please stay tuned for Parts II and III.
SOME of the questions you should be asking
– Do I need to work with a and prepare an RFP?
– How much internal staff time will be required?
– What are my 3-5 year corporate goals?
– Do I have an overall vision of my technology requirements across the entire enterprise?
– How will I define a successful implementation?
– Can I quantify the ROI of a new system?
– Have I documented our processes and requirements across all departments?
– Is new technology going to , profitable, efficient, competitive?
– Have I obtained executive and end user buy in?
– Have I budgeted adequately?
Basic budget elements for a new software system
– Business process planning and needs analysis
– Software
– Hardware
– and
– Out of scope incidentals
– Infrastructure
– Maintenance
– Support
– Recruiting
Here’s a great software selection aid that you can download called a . It provides a rating scale and a way to rank any 3 products in a side-by-side comparative format (for example comparing with Macola). Use it well!
By Altico Advisors, for and serving New Hampshire (NH)
Thanks, Martin. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at the shootout.
Seven of the top ERP Vendors will be doing head to head scripted demos at the ERP Vendor Shootout in Dallas Texas October 6-7. A great opportunity to see multiple vendors in the same place doing apples to apples comparisons in functionality. Microsoft, SAP, Epicor, Infor will all be there.
With any software initiative, especially ERP software, communicating the value proposition is a key. We are now at a point where we need to package everything together into a compelling value proposition. Up until this point we may have done the appropriate analysis and fully understand how to improve the current situation with ERP software, but if we can’t sell it to the key business decision makers, then no further action will occur. We need to define a compelling value proposition here and effectively communicate this value proposition to the appropriate stakeholders.
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