Vision33

Selecting New Business Management Software – The Fourth Question to ask is HOW?

How will the software actually work in your business?

Part 1

by Carl Lewis on 09/08/2009

By this time in your sales process, you should be fairly familiar with the publisher, the consulting company and the software they represent.  At the minimum, you should have seen a high level demonstration of the business software offering and it has passed this 5,000 foot evaluation for look and feel and the basic feature set it offers. Hopefully, you are now only looking at one or two, and no more than three finalists.  As I’m sure you have discovered, any more and you will not remember one from the other.  After a while, all the features look the same and you can’t recall which software did what.  It’s important to trim the candidates down to a very small group in order to really distinguish the best fit for your business.This is where the fog is lifted, and the truth is revealed.

Two Primary Approaches

This is where the really hard work is done by you and the Consulting firms.  For the Consulting firms, there are two primary approaches to this “last best attempt” to persuade you that their software is the “best fit” for your organization.

1. They have helped you to ascertain the TOP 5 Critical Issues facing your business today.  This is where the PAIN is.  If you can’t ascertain which software offering will alleviate this pain, it’s unlikely that you will purchase anything.  This, in my opinion, is why most Consulting firms do not lose to another Consulting firm; they lose to no-decision at all.  Why?  Because they do not adequately show they can eliminate the pain that your legacy system makes you live with day in and day out.
2. You have decided you want to see a detailed demonstration of your businesses processes in the proposed system.  This typically requires much more work on the part of both parties.  You, the prospect must document these processes and deliver enough data for them to emulate these critical business processes.  The Consulting firm will spend significant amounts of time creating what you can call a prototype of your company and the accompanying solution.  Often this requires creating customers, vendors, inventory items, and potentially Bills of Materials, Production Orders and much more in some cases.  If the Consulting firm is unwilling to go through this work, it’s a very good sign that they are not confident in their ability to adequately demonstrate these requirements.In either of these approaches, the focus is on your business, not the software!  Prospective customers must be reasonable about how much “proof” they expect.  If you are a very small company, it’s unlikely that the Consulting firm will feel that approach number two above is worth the effort.  Typically, a larger more complicated company will require the more detailed approach.  For larger companies, the Consulting firm will more easily invest the required time, because frankly, the pay-day makes it worthwhile.  For some smaller companies, the cost of sales is just too high to make this approach a good business decision.

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Stay tuned for Part 2.