Taking the Easy Path leads to a Long Journey in Selecting Systems
Have you ever come to a fork in the road where one is the easy route and another is a longer, more strenuous climb? Many of us face that decision regularly and I’ve seen this happen in systems selection projects for e-commerce, order management, warehouse management and enterprise resource planning systems. If you have ever faced the challenge of selecting a system for the first time or replacing an existing system, you know this can be a tough task.
However, for an important decision on a system that will manage your business and income, I am amazed at how many small to mid-size companies base their system selection on a word of mouth recommendations, a 2 to 3 hour Webex demo and a commitment from a vendor that the functionality will be delivered in a 2 to 3 month time period. If you are one of the few fortunate ones where this has worked for you then my hat is off to you but for the majority, this easy path is a mistake.
I worked with a company a year ago on a separate project and at that time they had begun looking for a new systems solution. I offered assistance to help them with their requirements and search but they opted to pursue the systems search on their own. In a chance meeting I ran into them recently and asked how the system implementation had gone. To my surprise it hadn’t. The vendor they selected based on a couple of Webex demos and few short meetings couldn’t meet their functionality demands. After 9 months of effort the project was abandoned. The company’s owner came up to me and said “you know, everything you warned us about how we were approaching the project and the risk involved turned out to be true. I wish we had taken the time to listen to you and used your expertise. The money that we would have spent with you would have been well worth it”. Unfortunately the company lost a full year’s worth of time and of course the expense that goes with it.
Lessons Learned. Taking the easy path on systems has never worked for me in the past. It inevitably causes heartache and pain down the road. Selecting e-commerce, order management, warehouse management and enterprise resource planning systems takes time and due diligence. It all starts with an analysis of your current business, developing requirements and knowledge of the software vendors. When it is time to search and select a system and you’ve come to that fork in the road, take a hard look at which path to take. How about your company, have you taken the easy path only to have the project fail?
Tocky Lawrence is a Vice President with F. Curtis Barry & Company, a multichannel operations and fulfillment consulting firm with expertise in multichannel systems, warehouse, call center, inventory, and benchmarking.
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