Software Selection and Ice Cream?

Remember when you could walk into the supermarket and choose from about 10 flavors of ice cream in the freezer case?  Yesterday, I took my kids to pick out a summer treat and was met with about 200 flavor combinations and presentations – on a stick, in a cup, waffle bowls, ½ the fat, slow churned, pints, quarts, ½ gallons…and the list goes on and on. While all of them can be good in the right situation, my kids were very picky about the ice cream that would taste best for them.

Much like ice cream, there are hundreds of software solutions available on the market. All of them can be a good fit for the right situation. The key is to find the right “flavor” for your company. Every company looking for software has their own unique environment and set of requirements that will drive them to the right solution for their situation.

But much like going to the ice cream aisle, it can be confusing to sort through all of the software options available. So before the shopping begins, it’s helpful to put together a project summary that you can use to talk with the software vendors to discover if they could be a fit for your company. The following are some suggestions of information about your company to discuss with the vendors to determine if you should go to the next steps of a more in-depth analysis.

– Company Size

– Industry

– Number of Employees

– Number of System Users

– Annual Revenue

– Software Budget (including Software Purchase, Implementation and Maintenance)

– Expected Project Timeline

– Technology and Deployment Reference (On-premises, Hosted, Cloud)

– Areas of Functionality Required

– Systems to Interface / Integrate

– Drivers for the Project