What do you think the number one objective for our business is? Can you describe the latest analysis of your core business process? What have you done on your own to improve your normal job functions? What are the customer requirements for an order that moves through your process system? What is the most common difficulty you face with customers? What part of the job do you wish could be done by someone else? Based on these questions, you will likely find a few items that will stick out.
This will give you something narrow in on. Next, we recommend watching from afar and trying to confirm any issues you have may have spotted. Identify the critical business processes that need to be reviewed by breaking down and rating the perceived risk in each problem.
Rate these 1 - 5. Watch those with the greatest risk. Determine the availability of continuous data for those risk areas. Ask yourself how will you measure something as inefficient or not. Ask yourself how will you observe it without introducing a bias to the scenario. Are there any special rules or parameters necessary to examine this?
Have a team meeting to discuss your findings. Regardless of whether or not you buy a new solution, you will discover lots of valuable information for yourself from studying your processes.
Let your findings marinate. Once you have reviewed your processes, if a new software seems right for you, it is time to evaluate the tools available. For our professional services people out there, if you pains like the ones listed below, a PSA could be for you. Scarcity of skilled resources and technological innovations. Evaluation of a new software solution should not be focused on features and functionality alone. This will not yield the most effective solution for any organization; nor will choosing solely on the basis of price or ROI.
The most effective solution will depend on various factors. Thus, basing a decision on any one or two factors will lead to a less than optimal result. Functionality : Do the features match up with your greatest needs? Be wary of tools grown via acquisition as their solution may be modularized and integrate poorly. Affordability: Cost is always a consideration.
Proper industry research will uncover cost considerations, including license fees, support, hardware, consulting and customization costs.
Users, managers, and executives will adopt applications that are straightforward and intuitive to use. Tools that require little to no training for the average user have an advantage. The quickest most powerful solutions will not be effective if they are too cumbersome to use. Vendor viability: evaluate whether the vendors will be around in years to come to ensure they are always supporting and developing their solution.
Make sure that agreement clauses meet your needs and not just the software vendor's needs. Consider not just the product you will be buying, but also consider the people you will be working with, those who will be answering your support calls and assisting with billing issues. This is not to be forgotten as issues are inevitable in any company. When is a time your company did not deliver on what you promised? Who else should I look at?
So, you chose the right software, weighed the pros and cons, received the green light from budget holders. That document should highlight the benefits that the new system will bring to the company. Include examples covering your workflow and explain clearly the steps necessary to implement the new tool in your production process. To really sell the upgrade, include information about how other teams within the business will benefit from the change. As an agency, we recently adopted Basecamp for project management and were careful to emphasise how the software was useful not only for account managers handling client comms, but also how it would enable the creative team to share files and documents seamlessly.
Provide links for tutorials and guides so your colleagues can deepen their knowledge of the new tool and make sure to offer the necessary assistance after the official launch. Sometimes the simple list of benefits or a purely technical guide are not sufficient to win over your team mates about the quality of the tool.
When possible, is worth considering organising a 1-to-1 session with your team mates, or a group demonstration of what the package can do. Try to involve your colleagues in challenges and workshops, like Becki Hall suggests :. Once the rollout phase is over, make sure that the new software is used in an appropriate manner and evaluate the performance. Regular checks are crucial to understand if your team is using the new tool as intended.
To measure the benefits that the new tool provides to your team and your company, you should schedule a review and verify if the new software has achieved its aims, how it improved your way of working and if there were any unforeseen issues.
This step is fundamental to understand which improvements are necessary to make the process better in the future. The rollout is really only the beginning, and should mark the start of an ongoing process of improvement.
A half-baked rollout is bad for everyone. As long as you follow the advice above and adhere to a rigorous plan for evaluating your options, you can make sure that every tool you roll out is a roaring success.
I am a big believer that trying out a software is the only way you'll know if it's a good fit. The last thing I do is try to replicate the same task in each software. In the case of searching for project management software, my goal was to track marketing campaign as projects, tactics as tasks, and individual actions as subtasks that could be assigned to other people. I took the exact same campaign and added it to each software I tested. So that's my process.
In the end, I narrowed my choices to two good options: Asana and Basecamp. I'll be honest, when I started the process, even before the first step, I really thought Basecamp would be my choice.
I had heard a lot about them, read the book written by their founder , and knew how much they integrated with other software. Basecamp is a great product and it hit all my requirements. However, Asana also hit all my requirements, and it did one thing that Basecamp didn't do: it felt right. When I was using Asana, I became comfortable very quickly, whereas Basecamp felt a bit stiff for my liking. It was not a very scientific decision, but it is one that I have been comfortable with for about eight months.
Asana continues to serve our team well today. So how about you? What do you look for in software? How do you go about evaluating new tools? Let me know in the comment section below!
Are you in the market for a new church management software, but still don't know what questions to ask? Download our free ebook "Church Management Software Checklist" for questions to help you get started. A graduate of Concordia University Wisconsin, his background in theology, business, and technology gives him a unique perspective on technology in the church.
He is married and the father of two young children. Handover—Making Yourself Replaceable. Some people love to go shopping, but it is not one of my favorite activities, so I try to make it as quick as possible.
I go in to the store, I get what I need, and I leave. Make a list of requirements I generally know exactly what I want, and that includes specific features within a software.
I started by making a list of the things I liked about using Outlook that were requirements for me: I can view all my tasks in one place I can set due dates for tasks, but I am not required to I can categorize tasks into projected, but I am not required to for those little one-off tasks I can quickly convert emails into tasks As you can see, I kept it pretty short.
Next, I made a list of the required features Outlook was lacking or features that didn't quite fit my expectations : I can assign tasks to different people I can add subtasks to a task and assign them to other people I can create a list of tasks from an external source such as Excel I can export data to an external source such as Excel I can access my to-do list on my phone I can integrate it with other software like Slack There were other things I considered including in my requirements, but I tried to distinguish between things I needed and things I wanted.
Explore all your options After I had my requirements, I compiled my list of options. Find out what others are saying With my list down to 15 options, I wanted to see what real people said.
Narrow your choices When reviewing software options, more isn't always better.
0コメント