Ask the Right Questions to Ensure Project Success

Picking an software package is a difficult and time consuming thing to do. Regardless of the package - ERP, manufacturing, distribution, accounting, etc. - it is a time consuming and often times confusing process. It is not something that organizations engage in on a regular basis (at least hopefully). As a result, they tend to spend most of their time concentrating on their specific business requirements and how the software packages meet these requirements.  This leaves almost no focus or time spent to ascertain how the software supplier actually runs their business.

In the actual software selection process, finding out what an organization will be like to do business with is easily as important as the overall functionality issue. When you select an software package, you are selecting both the package itself as well as the organization that supplies it to you. In your current business operations, it is likely that you have formed some sort of partnership or alliances with key suppliers. The goal is to have this same type of partnership or relationship with your future software supplier.

When you select an software supplier, far more so than many actual supplier relationships that you have in your actual business, it is imperative that you have a true “partnership” relationship with that supplier. You will be inexorably linked with them through the entire life cycle of the system within your organization.

This white paper is part of TGI’s Software Selection Tool Kit which is available on CD for free via an online request form.

White Paper Excerpt

This document is intended to help you, as a buyer of business software, to insure that you ask all of your potential software providers some of the really tough questions that will help you define whether or not you want to do ongoing business with these suppliers. The questions are not functional in nature. Rather, they are designed to help you understand, prior to purchasing a system from them, how a potential supplier will serve as a long-term business partner.

Download a Key Supplier Questions White Paper.

Click for important legal information or if you are an independent consultant.