System Selection

Overview

Selecting the right tools for your company is a daunting task. You will invest any where from 25% to 300% of the software costs in setting it up, understanding it, training the staff to use it properly and optimizing it. The investment to the company is obvious. Sometimes software is designed specifically for your industry and there are also packages that are very general. Deciding on which one best suits your needs is like buying a car. First you determine the base requirements. Then the features of each potential package has to be balanced against those requirements. However, many other issues should play into the decision - cost of the software; ease of use: short term and longer term needs; reporting capability (open vs. proprietary database); transaction response time; stability of the vendor; commitment of vendor to continue enhancing the software; etc. If it does not have a huge customer base, it may not be there for support in a few years.

Systems

Supply chain systems may vary between $100 to millions. Regardless of the cost you always want to maximize the value that you derive from the systems you install. The more complex the system, the higher the potential failure rate of the project. Business people are overloaded with work. However, any time that is spent learning the concepts behind the technologies and concepts will pay huge dividends.