Steps to Software Selection
1. Engage with the people. Lead your enterprise
community
stakeholders in the selection process and formally start a
project that defines clear roles, sets a timeframe to select
a solution and defines objectives and success criteria.
Inspire confidence in your business clients by coordinating a
technology solution.
2. Gather requirements. Have your users explain
their needs
and pain points, by keeping it very simple and do not over-
engineer requirements,
in other words, follow the three rules:
keep it simple
make it relevant
keep it to the point
3. Look at your landscape. Review your current
technology
environment; record each role function, document each
process step and document/flowchart the roles performing
each task, defining both automated systems and manual
tasks.
4. Market. Look at the market software products.
Focus
and look closely at the business process offerings, features
and functionalities in these market solutions.
5. Day in the Life. Compile use cases and
storyboards, scripts
of your business processes that are addressed in technology
solutions.
• Questions to be answered by the
use-cases and
storyboards
i. Does the product meet
your broad functional
requirements?
a. What is
the vendor’s approach to closing
functional gaps and creating enhancements to meet
your future needs?
ii. How difficult is it to set up the
product?
iii. How easy is it to re-configure
as your requirements
evolve?
iv. What are the skill sets and
training requirements users
need to
maintain the system?
v. Is the technology compatible with
your IT strategy?
vi. Do they offer a hosted
alternative?
6. Map a course of direction. Focus on a strategic
journey to
get your users what they want over a period of time.
7. Weed out the software vendors - Functional Demos.
Software vendor demonstrations against real world use-
cases. Users to score these demos looking closely at gaps
in missing functionality, and opportunities to integrate.
Score the demos and vote on the finalists.
8. Selection. Teams effort based on finalists
score, decide
which software vendor is the bests fit the requirement.
9. Finalists look under the hood. Have individual
software
vendors spend time with conducting technology
assessments and hands on evaluation. Score the finalists
and decide which software vendor is the best fit.