Software Selection Phase 1: Research

A successful software selection project begins with careful research. Before you can begin evaluating vendors, you need to perform a number of activities.

• Define your short- and long- term objectives: You need to understand what you hope to accomplish with your software selection project. Are you trying to solve a particular problem? Streamline business processes? Upgrade older systems?
  
  It's equally important, at this stage, to think about how your business will change over time, and how a new software solution should address future concerns.
  
  
• Identify and interview your stakeholders: An enterprise software purchase affects people at all levels of your organization. It's important to get input from all of these people in order to properly define your requirements.
  
  
• Select your project team: These are the people who will actively participate in the selection process. All of your stakeholder groups should be represented.
  
  
• Review your existing systems and business processes: Knowing the capabilities of your current software is key to understanding where you need to add and improve functionality.
  
  At the same time, reviewing your business processes can help you pinpoint areas where you can replace inefficient practices with best practices that will be supported by your new software.
  
  
• List and prioritize your functional and technical requirements :
  
  
  • Functional requirements are capabilities that you need the software to have. For example, functional requirements for a new customer relationship management (CRM) system might include marketing automation functionality
    
    
  • Technical requirements are things that the new software needs to support in order to integrate smoothly into your IT infrastructure. For example, you might require support for a particular server or database platform
    
    
  Assigning initial priorities to these requirements will help you sort out what is important, what is not, and what could be a deal-breaker.
  
  
• Create a working list of vendors: Based on your requirements, you can put together a long list of vendors for initial evaluation.

At the end of the research phase, your project team should have a clear understanding of what you expect to achieve and where to begin your evaluation.

TEC Can Help You Start Your Selection Project the Right Way

TEC's research centers provide analyst insight, marketing analyses, trend reports, and vendor and product information to support you in the critical early stages of your software selection project.

You can also engage TEC's analysts to support your selection project with industry expertise and a best-practice methodology developed over hundreds of selection projects. Our analysts can

• conduct on-site orientation sessions to help get your selection project underway
• help you develop an overview of your business, get a general outlook on growth or future plans, and crystallize your short- and long-term objectives
• work with your project team to identify, review, and prioritize your technical and functional requirements
• interview your executive team and review existing documentation to help you model key business processes

If your organization has more than one facility, subsidiary, or division, our project managers will work directly with each group to develop a set of requirements that integrates each group's needs with those of the organization as a whole.

If you are interested in TEC's Selection Services or would like to learn more, contact us or call (1-800) 496-1303 ext. 404 in North America, and +1 514-954-3665 ext. 404 outside of North America.