The Challenge of Buying Software for Your Company

To be perfectly honest this is not a topic that can be fully tackled in a simple article…it requires a book or a university course.

But I do believe it is worth throwing out a few ideas to think about…

In my experience there are two quite different sets of buyers in a company:

The first group consists of the business unit heads whose people or divisions will be using the software under investigation. They essentially want the proposed solution to do everything they require from a functionality point of view.

The second group are the C level company leaders who would jump for joy if every software application they bought solved each and every one of the problems at hand. But in reality, their primary challenge is to REDUCE the number of problems in the first place. So, pragmatism takes over and they would be happy with a software that will solve 80% of the problem.

This poses an interesting dilemma: should companies aim for as close to perfect or compromise?

The reality is that at any point in time company executives are trying to solve a constant series of problems that, once solved, are replaced by more problems.

Coupled with that, the other reality is that rarely does a software application solve 100% of a particular company’s problems— it just does not happen that way.

But with this dilemma floating at the top of people’s heads, it’s easy to waste a lot of time deciding which option is better but in reality, no application can do everything for everyone.

Line managers will try to look for the perfect solution to address their needs whilst their executive bosses would quickly settle for something that will fix only 80% of the problem. And while this discussion ping pongs back and forth, no solution to the problem at hand is provided and time and money are wasted.

But in 40 years the best software implementations were actually built on a foundation of compromise between the expectations of the line managers and company executives.

If the problem to be addressed needs serious attention do your due diligence... But be aware that time is ticking, the problem is not going away, and often an almost perfect fix that can be delivered now is far better than the elusive 100% fix that might be delivered sometime in the future.