What are some useful criteria for deciding on which software package to go for?

Question

How does one go about choosing a software vendor after having seen many presentations from many software vendors, from a user preference perspective?

I ask this question on behalf of a friend who has been put in charge of making such an evaluation, without any prior experience. I thought the experience of the SO community might generate something considerably more useful than a bit of googling.

Domain specificity is not important, but if it helps at all the systems currently being evaluated are Treasury systems and ERP (Electronic Resource Planning).

Thanks in advance for any help/ideas offered.

Answer 1

You should find out how their customer support works. Something might break in the product and you'll need technical support. If it's not there when you need it you risk just sitting there waiting and losing time and money.

Answer 2

See if you can find existing users of the packages either through people you actually know or through forums online. See what the pain points and advantages are. Also, you should press the vendors with questions about your specific usage scenario and demand real answers and not just sales/marketing spin; you're trying to see if the package will actually solve your problem.

Answer 3

I would want to know if the vendor is willing to give at least some of your money back if the system fails to deliver to pre-agreed criteria.

Are they going to be involved or committed?

(They say with breakfast the chicken is involved but the pig is committed)

Answer 4

A common tool for software evaluation is a SWOT analysis:

SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture.

[...]

• Strengths: attributes of the organization that are helpful to achieving the objective.
• Weaknesses: attributes of the organization that are harmful to achieving the objective.
• Opportunities: external conditions that are helpful to achieving the objective.
• Threats: external conditions which could do damage to the business's performance.