TEC: Enterprise Software Selection

The software selection process has become the ideal, impossible-to-circumvent tool necessary to address increasing needs for openness, fairness, accountability, and impartiality regarding decisions taken for corporate sake while facing a technology selection. Furthermore, recent major corporate and accounting scandals have raised these concepts from utopist and counter productive to legitimate and even highly desirable.

Although decision making with no planning is still far from being rare, there is a proven technique to help you identify the business software solution best addressing your needs within a complex context involving a number of alternatives and decision criteria not humanly manageable.

This ideal software selection process is threefold:

Specify and publicize your needs; then
Identify and evaluate available solutions; and finally
Compare solutions and select the best-matching option.

TEC's Technology Evaluation Centers provide you with such a decision-support system (DSS) guiding you towards the solution best-matching your needs, thus allowing you to lower risks, costs, and time associated with any business software selection. From specialists of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), you get assistance through your solicitation, evaluation, comparison, and selection process. Indeed, coupled with experts-vetted knowledge bases, powerful mathematical DSS tools permit an enlightened, impartial decision-making cycle, which can apply to a broad variety of technologies and business fields like ERP, CRM, SCM, PLM, Accounting, Finances, Outsourcing, Business Process Management (BPM), Human Resources (HR), and much more.

Software Selection Step 1: Define and structure your problem
	The ideal business software selection process start with your expressing your needs, and then translating them into requirements: Identify stakeholders Interview stakeholders Gather and prioritize requirements In order to allow the next deep and exhaustive evaluation of vendors' offerings, the software selection process formalizes your problem as a *knowledge base, also called decision model* or decision tree, which is a hierarchy of criteria directly inferred from the expression of your needs. The so-created decision hierarchy covers the following common but important sections for the final decision related to both company and product: Functions and features Technology Costs Services Viability Vision
Software Selection Step 2: Identify and evaluate solutions
	Perform market assessment to identify potential solutions: Research solutions Identify relevant solutions Build the long list of potential solutions Issue a request for information (RFI) to software vendors in the long list Gather responses from software vendors Evaluate the solution provider responsibility and their solution responsiveness: Build a decision matrix Rate each solution within the knowledge base Analyze strengths and weaknesses (sensitivity analysis, what-if scenario) Rank solutions and keep top ten (shortlist) Notify rejected vendors and handle disputes Issue an RFP to software vendors in the shortlist Develop a scripted scenario of functionality as mapped to internal business processes Invite vendors to on-site demonstrations Rate demonstrations Gather RFP responses from short-listed software vendors Revisit analyses with respect to their inclusion of the evaluation of the demonstrations
Software Selection Step 3: Compare solutions and select the best match
	The ideal software selection process provides you with powerful mathematical decision-support systems (DSS) tools that, coupled with the knowledge base, help you identify the solution best-matching your needs: Rank solutions and keep the top two (reduced short list) Client reference check Select the solution that best fits requirements Notify rejected vendors and handle disputes Approval Solution award Negotiate prices (licenses, services, etc.) Sign contract

This part delineates policies and procedures governing competitive and noncompetitive negotiated acquisitions like:

Book Description:
The newly expanded and updated second edition of this best selling and practical handbook is designed to give hands-on contracting professionals a solid working knowledge of this critical process.
This proven resource covers the entire source selection process, including acquisition and source selection planning, preparation of requests for proposals, proposal solicitation and preparation, proposal evaluation, award without discussions, discussions and final proposal revisions, final proposal evaluation, contractor selection, and debriefings and protests.

Source Selection Answer Book, Second Edition provides concise, straightforward answers to common questions about the Federal government's rules and procedures in selecting contractors including: