Software Selection

With thousands of software applications available for consideration, we will efficiently and effectively guide your organization through a review of your critical business processes, work with your team to identify  functional and technical requirements, provide a review of vendor options, assist with facilitation of software demos, and provide feedback and tools to support the selection of a finalist vendor. To complete the process we provide assistance with the review and negotiation of contract documents with finalist vendors to ensure final documents are mutually equitable to your
organization.
 

Our comprehensive review of your current business processes provides a comparison with common industry best practices based on our experience with software selection and implementation for your industry. Once the Business Process evaluation is complete we can provide recommendations for process improvement that align with current software technology and future state objectives. The review contributes to the identification of functional and technical requirements, and supports the implementation of your final solution to take advantage of the best practices offered by the selected vendor.
 

To start each project, we conduct Discovery Workshops with your project team and key stakeholders to review your current business processes, review ancillary systems and workarounds, identify software functional and technical needs and key requirements, and introduce opportunities for efficiency improvements which should be supported by a new system. We know how to efficiently gather the software requirements with minimal impact on your staff and within a more reasonable timeframe than most consulting firms. We pioneered the development of a Key Requirements document that includes the most important requirements that will help differentiate the software vendors under consideration. This approach allows you to more directly evaluate which solution is the right fit for your organization.
 

SoftResources will develop a Long List of software options to consider in your review. The Key Requirements document is used as the foundation piece to compare and contrast vendor options from this Long List to the specific business needs of your organization. This process may include a formal Request for Proposal or bid process required by organizations with specific Purchasing policies. For other clients the review and analysis will consider all vendors on the Long List. The end goal of our review will be to develop a Short List recommendations of vendors and their software solutions that should be elevated to the software demo process. To support our clients with the software demo process, SoftResources will create a customized Demo Script document that will be used a guide to the vendor demonstrations. The content of the Demo Script includes the specific functional and technical requirements your organization has for replacement software and that should be included in the vendor’s demo process. A scripted demo ensures vendor presentations are comparable and comprehensive, ensures your team can effectively compare vendor options, and provide the opportunity for your team to understand how the proposed software will support them with their day to day business processes.  SoftResources will facilitate the software demos to ensure vendor’s remain focused on the required content.
 

After the Demos are completed and frontrunner vendor or vendors are identified for additional review, we advise you through the due diligence process which typically includes customer reference calls or visits, follow up demos, vendor headquarters visits, and final vendor analysis. We also facilitate the final decision meeting by providing insight and counsel to your software decision process. We invite you to reach out to us for more in-depth information on this important service.