Whether you are executing a software selection internally, or are hiring a consultant to do the work, it is absolutely necessary that the appropriate expertise is present in those doing the work. Specifically, the staff executing the selection needs to be objective, understanding of the risks, demonstrate leadership in driving the project to success, the individually skilled, and have industry knowledge about your business.
Objectivity
objectivity can manifest itself in two ways. First, objectivity should apply to the assessment of your requirements versus your existing legacy solutions versus acquiring new solutions to meet those requirements. By this we mean everything should be on the table. If an existing legacy solution is still the best way to satisfy the requirement, then consideration should be given to keeping. If legacy applications cannot meet the requirement, then acquisition of a new solution should be considered.
Second, especially when using a third-party consultant, the organization should not have a vested interest in the selection of a particular solution. This typically manifests itself when a consulting organization helping you do a software selection also has an implementation practice tied to one or more candidate solutions. Such a relationship creates an “enlightened self-interest” within the consulting organization to keep their own people billable.
Risk management
Understanding the risks associated with any solution implementation project is necessary to help form the correct plans with the correct partners to be successful. Third-party consultants have, typically, been involved in many projects. Often many more than your internal staff have. They should have the experience and the training to advise you as to what the risks are and how you can build plans that mitigate these risks.
Leadership
When embarking on a software selection and implementation project for the enterprise solutions, many parts of the organization have vested interests in the project success. The staff asked with executing such a project needs to be led by individuals who are comfortable interacting both with top management, middle management, and operational staff. They also need to be disciplined, focused on project success, and willing to drive the organization through the execution of a structured plan.
Skilled staff
The project team executing the selection and implementation of the new system needs to have cross representation from many functional areas. Departmental operations, process design, training and organizational change, solution domain expertise, IT and infrastructure technical expertise, as well as overall business value and industry expertise are all skills that need to be represented on the team. This broad cross-section of experiences typically advocates for a blended team of internal and external resources. Some of these resources may come from the solution vendor’s organization, a third-party implementation/integration services company, as well as from a third-party consulting company working for you rather than the solution vendor.
Industry knowledge
industry knowledge is called out here specifically to expand the view of the project beyond just those skills contained within your company. The idea here is to understand what other companies in your industry, or similar related industries, are doing to solve the same problem you’re trying to solve. What’s also included in this is having a knowledge of what off-the-shelf software solutions can do not only to solve the problems you see, not only to deliver solutions for requirements, but to also expand your view beyond your existing world towards where you might go in the future.