Evaluating Enterprise Software - Business Process or Feature/Function-Based Approach? All the above, Perhaps?
P.J. Jakovljevic, Olin Thompson & Joseph Strub - October 25, 2003

Introduction

Ever since the advent of business applications a few decades ago, selecting a piece of enterprise application software has proven to hardly ever be an exact science. Vendors' hype, consultants' "conflict of interest" and consequent bias, users' doubts and apathy, tediously long selection processes, and unclear decision rationales are some of the unfortunate watchwords for the selection practice so far. It has indeed been daunting for corporate IT buyers to discern the true capabilities, strengths and weaknesses, and degree of fit of a given enterprise application suite for their business environment. The fact that these solutions are not readily available from a local "Enterprise Applications 'R' Us" outlet (unless we are talking about the likes of QuickBooks for some "mom and pop" small office/home office [SOHO] businesses) and the propaganda that pervades vendors' endeavors to differentiate themselves, only serve to complicate matters (see Beware of Vendors Bearing Solutions ). When making strategic IT acquisitions, buyer's project teams, inundated with an abundance of available products and technologies, have a difficult time translating the content of glitzy marketing brochures and grandstanding presentations into the deliverable products' capabilities...