To ease the fear of software changes\u2014which will probably lead to systems changes\u2014include representatives from each business area affected.<\/strong><\/p>\nThen, hold follow-up focus groups and workshops with groups of employees to fill in the gaps and identify potential points of friction and additional value. They may even identify new requirements that could improve processes without additional software investment.<\/p>\n
How to Identify Key Business Requirements<\/h3>\n
Once the employees have identified and documented business requirements, you should share their findings with other stakeholders for review. This process can help indicate which requirements are key and which you can eliminate. You are looking for requirements that:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Deliver competitive advantage<\/li>\n
- Maximize the business outcomes critical to your stakeholders<\/li>\n
- Automate and simplify processes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
You should also look carefully at requirements that you can meet with the configuration of off-the-shelf solutions rather than customization of more unique solutions.<\/p>\n
Obviously, the less customization you can do, the lower your cost \u2014 customization is one of the largest risk areas for any software project. At the same time, as the trucking company example shows, the value of a key business requirement may outweigh the cost.<\/strong> You can only know this by identifying your key requirements.<\/p>\nHow to Maintain Value through Integration<\/h2>\n
Another important consideration is integration. Even if you decide you need a new or custom solution to maintain an advantage, your advantage will quickly erode if the solution does not integrate easily with your current installed systems.<\/p>\n
For example, another former client, a large manufacturing company, decided to use a single vendor\u2019s infrastructure for its nation-wide offices. The move was a success until the company tried to connect its manufacturing facilities.<\/p>\n
After the company had set up data centers in the plants, they realized that the infrastructure required a special interface, with virtually no natural integration between systems.<\/strong> What was a big benefit to the administrative offices caused huge problems in manufacturing, showing why it\u2019s critical to look at all interfaces in the upstream and downstream systems before implementing major systems changes.<\/p>\nThe Next Frontier: Business Transformation<\/h2>\n
As businesses continue to evolve toward a fully enabled Business Anywhere future, software choices will increasingly come down to how to do things differently rather than just faster. In other words, you will need to consider business transformation as well as business improvement.<\/p>\n
The catch is, as you transform more of your competitive capabilities, you will likely have to begin transforming functional capabilities. As a result, in the future, even your basic function software needs to be agile enough to accommodate change without seriously affecting costs or processes.<\/p>\n
By getting ahead of the game on understanding and identifying key business requirements, you will position yourself for long-term success no matter what the future holds.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n
With the great variety of software solutions on the market today, you need to be smarter about buying software. Viewing your software selection through the lens of key business requirements can not only cut through the many competing claims in the market today but help identify a solution that is perfect both for helping you run your business day-to-day and for maintaining your competitive advantage.<\/strong><\/p>\nIn the next post in this series, we\u2019ll look at how to interact more effectively with software vendors so you can head off unexpected costs down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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