Often the wrong people are making these decisions, they aren't bad people but they should rely on those who work with Technology and understand the implications of making the wrong choices. One of the best ways to prevent the wrong people from making I.T. decisions is to make sure all business processes are well documented and measured (weighted). Why you ask?
* If all subject matter experts in your business were to document their business processes, you would know exactly what each staff person has to do each and everyday to get the job done. * You then have a foundation to measure the right software applications for your business * These business processes can now be measured and weighted to help make I.T. decisions for your organization
Those are just few but you should be getting the idea.
There are many ways of handling the task of measuring business processes but I'll try to keep it simple for you. There are two things I would recommend:
1. Build a Database (MySQL or SQL) to store your business processes & the weighting 2. Build Excel Worksheets to enter & pull these processes and weights from the Database
Years ago I had a couple of really sharp guys working for me, they built a nifty application (system) for us to measure our business processes against features in software applications. We wanted to have a snapshot of how each application matched up against each other, the problem is we didn't have an easy way to see all our requirements on one page. We also didn't know which processes were more important than others.
The first step is to pull your key subject matter experts together, get all business processes documented for each role in the organization. This ensured you knew what tasks had to be completed each and everyday to do business. Depending on your business this can be an easy job or a labour intensive one. I highly recommend this gets done regardless of how hard or how long it takes, because it makes future upgrades and or the decision to change a core application in your organization much easier.
Once you have your business processes documented you have something to work with when deciding what software or ERP systems implement, this job takes time but it's well worth it. Enter these processes into your database, then build spreadsheets to pull that data out for review.
In your database you want to also store a measurement we'll call weighting for this example. Why? When you sitdown and have software demonstrated you can ask key questions, does this software do this and that from your database. Afterall, you are asking directly from how you do business (your documented business processes). You now want to be able to give that process a score or measurement when sitting in these demonstrations. Your scale might look like this:
1 - Does it well and is easy to use
3 - Does it but not well - not easy to figure out or use
5 - May need to be modified
9 - Not sure - need more information
0 - Doesn't do it at all
In your spreadsheet you would use the above scale to measure the software you are looking at on a business process by business process basis. Sounds tedious doesn't it? It is when setting things up the first time, after that it gets much easier because you don't need to build it again.
This is just one way of measuring your business process against software, you could and should group your business processes by importance as well. That way you know exactly what you MUST have and what the NICE to have's would be.
I hope that helps, feel free to contact me if you have questions or wish to go through this process for your business.
I would love your feedback, what do you think and do you have a better way?