From time to time, you will need to purchase software for your company. These solutions can help you save money, increase efficiency, and ensure customer satisfaction. However, it can be hard to know just which purchase is the right one. The tipsbelow can help you decide.
Know Your Stakeholders
One of the big mistakes many companies make right out of the gate is failing to involve everyone who will be affected in the process. What do your managers and their staff think about the change you are considering or the software you have trialed? Not only does getting employee feedback offer insight you might not otherwise be aware of, but it can also increase the likelihood of employee buy-in. New software often means having to retrain, change processes and face a steep learning curve, and the transition will be much smoother if the teams that have to use it are in favor of it. You should also work with your IT department to make sure that there are no security issues around the software you are considering.
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Identify the Problem
Engaging with your employees will help you avoid identifying the wrong problem in many cases, but you’ll need to dig deeper, and in some cases, as the business owner or as a manager, you’ll have access to higher-level information that can inform your decision. If you work in fleet management, you may need to keep costs down, ensure that your drivers are safe, keep your fleet maintained, and remain compliant with local and federal regulations. Fleet telematics can go beyond GPS tracking to do all of these things, and you can select a platform that best suits your company’s needs.
Research
The next step is to take the information that you have and do your research. What is your budget? You’ll be limited by this to some extent but be sure that you don’t give in to a false economy in which you try to find easy ways to save your business money by purchasing software that doesn’t do everything you need or that is substandard. Talk to others in your field about what they use, and see what kind of reviews the software gets. Consider how much training will be required, and how to achieve seamless software introduction for you and your team. This will lead you to what will need to change in your processes. Then, go back to your stakeholders and get their input.
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Trial Your Choices
Most software offers a free trial. You may want to try several of these demos before making your final choice. You should draw up a list of objective, measurable criteria to help you with this. You may also find that you have to consider how high a priority certain criteria are if there is not a product that fully meets all of your requirements. One type may require more training but have greater functionality while a different one you are looking at might be easier to use but also have fewer capabilities. You may decide that the latter will still work for you if the greater functionality is not particularly important.
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