Business Process Analysis - Software

Software that ties your business processes together is a wonderful thing.  Disconnected software is just the opposite, worse than no software at all.  Software is much like inventory, representing a large investment of money and time learning to use it correctly.  Unlike inventory, it's not something you'll be able to sell somewhere down the road.

Any generic discussion of software must rely on the usage of words like most and many.  Defining software down to the brand level should eliminate these terms and get down to definite yes/no answers.

Before you purchase software you need to understand your own internal business processes.  Software providers tend to write the functionality descriptions in Greek (sometimes pronounced Geek) filled with industry buzzwords requiring a dictionary to understand what they are saying!  Failure to understand your own business processes will only make their specifications more cryptic.  Understanding your own processes and knowing what you really need will allow you to talk to software sales people and pin them down on features and functionality.  Some sales people don't understand the product they are selling, they rattle off the buzzwords to seem like experts who know what's best for you.  Make them speak your language and get yes and no answers, if you're making a large investment, a definite maybe isn't a good reason to invest.

It's helpful if you understand your processes down to the level of being able to write a wish list or specifications you are most interested in.  What are your key parameters?  Things like interfacing with software you may already have like accounting software.  Many small businesses use Quick Books accounting software.  Selecting software that already has an interface to Quick Books can save a great deal over writing a custom interface.

When choosing between custom and commercial (off the shelf) software, try to find off the shelf software when possible.  Custom software is like the gift that keeps on giving; giving to the programmer who writes it!  Custom software should be the last resort when there's absolutely no commercial software available to fit your needs.  Custom software usually needs periodic upgrades as your business changes and that's more money out to your programmer.

Commercial software usually has a staff dedicated to the product who are constantly updating and upgrading it.  Products normally come with some level of support and upgrade availability.  Sometimes support is free and sometimes it isn't!  Custom software upgrades are never free and depends on you and your programmers dedication toward updating and upgrading as opportunities present themselves.

When evaluating commercial software, you usually find there's always something about it that doesn't quite fit the way you do business.  Ask yourself if you're doing business the right way or looking at the wrong software.  You may have to change some of your business processes to fit the software.  We don't live in a perfect world and compromises are involved in everything we do.  Most companies who supply commercial software have studied the market niche they are selling into and have a pretty good idea how a particular area should work.

When a client thinks custom software is the answer, we do our own evaluation to assure ourselves that we can't find anything comparable on the market.  Of course to do that, we must first understand the clients needs and processes before we can do so.  If there is a commercial package available, we'll recommend at least evaluating that before going into a custom software project!  Are we cutting our own throats?  Maybe!  But having been in this business for a long time working for various companies, we fully understand the commitment to both custom and commercial software.

The preceding paragraph mentioned making a software commitment.  This isn't like boy-girl relationships where one of the other wont make a commitment.  It's important to understand that purchasing software isn't just a commitment of funds, it's a commitment of your business process.  For the maximum return on your investment, you have to work within the confines of the software and not work around it.  Inventory software doesn't serve you well if you are expecting to have something in stock only to find it really isn't there.  It was issued or consumed but the transaction never entered to show the issue and adjust the balance.  For software to tell you what you need to know about your business, you need to tell it what it needs to know about your business.  Once you commit yourself to a particular software package, keeping the in/out data flow must be as automatic as coming to work each day.

If you purchase commercial software, even if you can modify it, avoid it at all costs.  Modifying commercial software makes it difficult and costly to upgrade.  In our various past lives that we often needed to supplement commercially available software with reports that gave people a different view if the data at their disposable.  Most of the time, this was commercial software used by large companies.  We DID NOT modify the commercial software.

Configuring your software isn't the same as modifying it.  Most software products will allow you to configure it to your specifications, add your logos, letter heads and ????  Upgrades support the current configuration of your software.

Reporting!  We've not seen any software that can provide every company view that can be imagined.  An option to look at when thinking about software is an add-on reporting package that will allow creation of custom reports to see the data any way you want to see it.