Time and Money
When you introduce a piece of software into your company, you are not just investing the money necessary to purchase, install, and configure the software.  In fact, the tangible costs of procuring the software are in many cases far less than the overall, intangible costs of using the package.  Data Conversion, Project Management, Downtime, Training, Deployment, and Data Entry are just some of the intangible costs related to installing a new software package.

Designing the Expenditure
Applying a design process approach to the problem of finding software is the only way to insure that the final decision is implemented with a plan for containing intangible costs and maximizing the benefits gained from the software.  An Information Technology Plan accompanies the software selection decision.  More importantly, the design process also prevents costs associated with choosing the wrong package.

The chart above illustrates the costs of a typical software procurement.  Note that the intangible costs add up to far more than the cost of the software itself. 

Opportunity Knocks!
There is a legitimate opportunity cost even when the right package is selected, due to the intangible costs associated with the procurement.  But one of the most frustrating hidden costs of acquiring the wrong software is the opportunities that you cannot pursue due to the limitations of your system.  Many companies have been forced to do without common technologies because they have already exhausted monies earmarked for IT spending. 

As the price of software increases, the intangible costs associated with the procurement increase almost exponentially.  Sometimes clients pay an overall price of 400-500 percent of the software price alone.

The Process
As with every infotex engagement, our clients are guided through the acceptance, analysis, definition, divergence, selection, implementation, and evaluation phases of the design process.  Specifically for a software search and selection, the following actions are usually taken: