A Guide to the Process of Enterprise Software Selection

Many organizations may have spent years, possibly even decades, working diligently to achieve success. But when the playing field is no longer level, it’s time to innovate before you dissipate.

For enterprise-level businesses, keeping pace with innovation is a constant challenge. By ignoring innovation, you only prolong the inevitable. Making rash, uninformed decisions can put your company on a dangerous trajectory.

Finding the right solution takes input and collaboration from a variety of key decision-makers. Who should you include in the process of enterprise software selection? The answer is? It depends on your business, core technology, and objectives.

This enterprise software selection guide provides several insightful tips to help you form a team that will lead you towards the best enterprise software solution to address your specific needs.

What to Consider During the Process of Enterprise Software Selection

It takes time to find the ideal enterprise software vendor for your business. Because the vetting process can be long and costly, establishing clear objectives early on is essential for reducing the cost of your enterprise software project. The selection process typically involves between 3-10 vendors, which means the more vendors you reach out to, the longer and more expensive your process will be.

Internally, your organization needs to set rules for performing due diligence, vetting qualifications, rejecting poor matches, and, ultimately, defining its shortlist. Of course, you don’t want ten vendors on your shortlist. However, two is ideal, but three is also manageable. Anything beyond that can make the final selection process harder than it needs to be.

Calculating the Cost of Selection

The enterprise software selection can take anywhere from three to eighteen months. The faster you can pull together your team and start vetting vendors, the smaller the hit to your bottom line.

According to the Supply Chain Coalition, it takes “up to 300 hours/person by a team of up to 20 key individuals” to select enterprise software for your business. But with the right team (and helpful vendors), you can cut down this number drastically.

They estimate that the cost of selection, on average, equals $900,000. Here’s how they reached this number:

Company burdened rate ($150/hour) x 300 hours x 20 employees = $900,000

And that’s before you get any benefit from your new system. Certainly, this figure could account for the worst-case scenario, but we believe that transparent collaboration is the key to accelerating your project and reducing the cost of implementation.

We know that you want to recoup your investment as quickly as possible, which is why we’ve made it our goal to help businesses generate 100 percent ROI within the first 12-18 months of implementation.

If you want to learn more about how companies like yours have handled the selection process, our team is happy to walk you through some case studies from past customers who are already using IntelliChief. Now, it’s time to answer the question:

Who Should You Include in the Enterprise Software Selection Process?

Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

As the strategic leader of the organization, the CEO provides the vision and overall direction for the business. They should be involved in the enterprise software selection to ensure that the software aligns with the long-term business objectives and the company’s growth strategy.

The CEO may not be involved in the technical aspects of the selection. Still, they will play a critical role in approving budgets, finalizing decisions, and endorsing the software that will drive the company’s success.

Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

The CFO oversees the company’s finances and is key in ensuring that the selected software fits within the budgetary constraints. They will assess the software’s financial impact, including both initial costs and long-term costs such as licensing, support, and training fees.

The CFO should also be involved in evaluating ROI, financial reporting features, and the software’s ability to help improve financial controls and reporting accuracy.

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

The CIO takes the lead in matters concerning the evaluation and implementation stages of the enterprise software selection process. This technical role is responsible for ensuring the smooth rollout of any new technologies in your organization. However, their job doesn’t exclusively involve overseeing hardware, software, and data for the C-suite.

They are also tasked with researching potentially lucrative technologies, building use cases, and providing value propositions. In most implementations, the CIO plays a prominent role because they combine the technical know-how of IT with the high-level insights of the C-suite.

President/Vice President

The President (or even the Vice President) can be an effective partner in navigating the software selection process. Similar to the CEO, the President and the VP have high-level knowledge of your organization’s needs and a strong understanding of what must be done to succeed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

While this position most commonly deals with logistics, business operations, and policy, they can also serve as the glue between various managers and decision-makers. They can help you determine which type of enterprise software will have the most significant benefit by examining operational weaknesses, inefficient business processes, and detrimental cost centers.

Operations Manager

The operations manager, also referred to as the chief operating officer or COO, oversees various high-level HR-related duties, including:

• Scouting and attracting qualified talent
• Establishing rigorous training standards
• Refining the hiring process
• Analyzing organization processes and recommending improvements
• Enhancing workforce quality, productivity, and efficiency

Implementing enterprise software, whether in Human Resources or any other department in your organization, will affect your employees directly by altering the way they perform their jobs. While these changes are almost always positive, they are changes, and employees often resist changes to the status quo.

Production Manager

The production manager plays a vital role in any organization focused on production and distribution. From scheduling to budgeting and meeting deadlines, the production manager has an inside track on the functions that allow your business to satisfy commitments to customers.

How does enterprise software factor into your production line? This is an important question that you will need to address at some point during the enterprise software selection. The production manager can help you answer it.

For example, if you are shopping for Sales Order Automation, your production manager can help you understand the effect that faster order processing and clearance will have on your production needs. When you receive the product payment faster, you can complete orders more quickly, but what effect does that have on production? There’s a good chance that you will need to produce more products to satisfy faster order turnaround.

Warehouse/Shipping Manager

According to TalentLyft, warehouse managers (or shipping managers) are responsible for an array of important tasks, such as verifying content before shipping and placing orders for supplies.

However, today’s shipping managers are also responsible for using software to optimize distribution processes, managing documents (i.e., advanced shipping notices, pick slips, bills of lading, and more), and directing packages from start to finish. Which is why they’re important to include in the enterprise software selection process.

Depending on your enterprise software solution, any number of these processes can be streamlined or automated, which means including your warehouse/shipping manager in your search will help you identify a solution that meets your requirements from both operations and cost savings perspectives.

Accounts Payable Manager

One of the fastest ways to recoup your initial investment when purchasing enterprise software is by starting in Accounts Payable. If your organization is still performing AP tasks “the old way,” it will benefit immensely from Accounts Payable Automation.

AP Automation helps businesses reduce invoice processing costs, eliminate late fees, and capture more early payment discounts. It’s the perfect starting point for any enterprise software implementation because it demonstrates lightning-fast ROI and significant operational improvements. Once you see the benefits of AP Automation, it’s only a matter of time before you expand your solution to other departments, especially if your solution is designed for the enterprise and can be utilized for multiple applications.

Your Accounts Payable Manager is an integral part of any software selection committee, providing the technical expertise of your specific AP processes that will allow your vendor to automate your processes in a way that matches the way you currently do business (while refining these processes and making them faster and more efficient).

When implemented by a proven vendor with a penchant for AP Automation success, your AP manager’s job becomes much easier. AP Automation streamlines invoice processing, voucher creation, records management, and reporting.

Line Supervisors

Line supervisors oversee work performed on the line, manage schedules, and monitor quality control. Career Trend describes line supervisors as the “eyes and ears on the line during operations.”

Although line supervisors do not perform high-level management tasks, they can provide the most granular insights into your specific processes. When mapping processes for process automation, talking to your line supervisors can ensure that nothing falls between the cracks.

This is important because even minor tasks can throw off your automation implementation when unaccounted for. Plus, they will have a more complete understanding of undocumented tasks and tribal knowledge associated with the particular line they are supervising.

Outside Consultants

Forming a selection committee with members of your organization is a surefire way to ensure that your enterprise software selection process is productive; however, there’s no denying the fact that the solution you need may not be one that you’re familiar with.

For this reason, many businesses seek assistance from consultants outside of their organization. Outside consultants are helpful for a number of reasons, including:

• Experience dealing with customers that match your business profile
• Expertise on the subject of enterprise software as well as the various types of software that can be utilized to solve your unique problems
• Connections within the enterprise software industry for potential discounts
• Taking point during the selection process to weed out vendors that are only looking for a sale
• Impartiality during the selection process
• Familiarity with your existing core technology
• Industry-specific or ERP-specific knowledge

Account Executives (From Vendor Shortlist)

Once you have created a shortlist of vendors you are interested in discussing your project with, establish a point of contact at each solution provider. Are they trying to sell you their product? Yes. But in order to do so, they need to answer all of your questions and gain your confidence. In other words, you have all the leverage during the selection process.

Here’s an insider tip: the vendors on your shortlist are expecting you to be in talks with other providers. Use this to your advantage. Compare and contrast their offerings against the others on your shortlist. It’s a good idea to be transparent about the other vendors you’re considering, as this can help you discover which ones are being substantive with their claims and which ones are only blowing smoke.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide for yourself which vendor has the right solution for your business, but it’s impossible to distinguish between the good and the bad without talking directly to an account executive from each contender.

Here are some questions to consider as you talk to vendors:

• Does the solution integrate with my ERP system?
• If so, does the integration provide real-time updates?
• Will I have to change my business processes?
• Is the interface user-friendly?
• What features are available to improve straight-through processing rates?
• Does the solution permit remote work capabilities?
• Is the solution audit-friendly?
• Does the solution feature analytics for reporting?
• Can the solution be expanded to other departments?
• What else is included beyond the software itself?
• How is training handled?
• What makes this solution more suitable than the others on my shortlist?
• How can we verify ROI before making a significant investment?

By asking these questions (and others), you can start to whittle down your shortlist from the recommended three vendors to your chosen enterprise software solution.

You’ve Formed Your Enterprise Software Selection Committee. What’s Next?

Now that you’ve assembled a diverse, knowledgeable team of experts from inside and (potentially) outside your business, it’s time to get to work.

Businesses often fail to recognize the detrimental effect of existing inefficiencies that have been baked into their processes for years, but this is the very reason why waiting to get started only hurts your bottom line. Fortunately, there are several ways to get started, including:

• Submitting contact forms
• Requesting a demo
• Viewing past webinars
• Browsing educational resources

For more information on identifying the right enterprise software solution for your unique business needs, contact us today. Our experts are standing by to help you break down your goals and requirements.