How to Choose the Right Software System for Your Company (Part I)

Choosing software for your business can be a daunting task, if not scary! Many business owners and managers know they need a new software system, but something is holding them back.

What prevents you from upgrading your system and/or processes?

1. Are the choices overwhelming?
2. Is it the time needed to make the correct decision for your business?
3. Is it the time needed to switch to a new software solution or change a process?
4. Is it the fear of making the wrong decision?
5. Is it a combination of all of these factors or others?
6. Is it another unlisted concern that is holding you back?

These are legitimate concerns. In an effort to help ease them, I will attempt to provide guidance in navigating these concerns. I cannot give you a roadmap that will pinpoint the exact software for your business because every business is different with unique circumstances. Let’s remember that no one software system fits every person or company. Also, all guidance in this blog series is based on my time in the industry helping companies manage the onboarding process. That being said, these steps are only suggestions because, depending on your business, parts of steps could move or merge.

Over the course of this blog series, I’ll discuss steps for finding the right software system for your team and company. Throughout the strategy, it is advisable to record your information in matrix format somewhere, such as a Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Using one of these options will make sorting the information quicker and easier. When you create the matrix, I would advise you to list software solutions providers down the y-axis and your requirements across the x-axis. Additionally, break your groupings into essential, conditional, and nice-to-have features (You will see these distinctions in Step 2, so be ready.). This could allow you to track left to right, up to down the best and most appropriate options for your company.

The strategy I will follow is a 6-step process I call Planning Your Strategy. The steps are as follows:

1. Know Your Objective
2. Prioritize Your Needs
3. Create a Software Vendor Short List
4. Validate Your Short List (a.k.a. Make Exclusions)
5. Evaluate Your Choices
6. Make the Decision and Negotiate

Step 1: Know Your Objectives

To help focus your software search, I recommend you define your criteria and know what you’re looking for! To be successful, you must know what the software solution needs to accomplish, know your pain points (problems the new software solution is solving), and know the value of the solution (quantify the solution in terms of time, money, or benefits to the organization). Remember to record your criteria in your designated Excel or Google spreadsheet along the x-axis.

As you start this process, it might be important to involve your team early on. They are the ones using the current software system (if one exists), know its failures, deal with the pain points on a daily/weekly basis, and must learn the new system. Furthermore, remember that change can be intimidating for most people. So, to help your team welcome in the coming change, involve them in the decision-making process, and add their needs to the list of requirements. Additionally, they should be involved in testing out the new system, when possible and appropriate, to ensure it functions better than the current solution.

As you develop the team, you should consider the following questions:

1. Who will do the evaluations?
2. What is your timeline?
3. Who is the final decision maker?

Step 2: Prioritize Your Needs

As you can probably guess, no software solution fits all employees or companies. Every software solution has trade-offs. In some cases, multiple solutions are required to meet your needs. In this case, you might want to make sure that these software systems can interface with each other, which can sometimes be a simple add-on to most software solutions or it can be more complicated. If it is more complicated, please consult industry colleagues facing similar issues or the software supplier, if applicable. Keeping all of this in mind, I advise you to prioritize the needs of your company by determining the most relevant features as either essential, conditional, and nice-to-haves.

Just remember before you go any further, we all think everything is an essential item at some point. So, be careful not to throw everything into the “essential” bucket. To help with this, think about the suggestion in Step 1 of assembling a team of users to assist the company in moving forward.

With this team, start listing out the essential, conditional, and nice-to-have features.

1. Essential: These are the must haves, such as optimization (multiple options here with A+W Defect Optimizer, A+W Shape Optimizer, A+W Rack Optimizer, and A+W Realtime Optimizer), capacity planning (known as A+W Capacity Planner) CAD (known as A+W CAD Designer Shapes & Bars), cutting (such as A+W iCut), scheduling/tracking (check out A+W Production), easy machine management, etc. If the system doesn’t have these features, the system is not feasible for your company.
2. Conditional: These features aren’t mission critical, but would enhance the productivity of your business, such as an e-commerce quoting feature (known as A+W iQuote for flat glass or window manufacturers), or barcode scanning (known as A+W Barcode Manager). (Of course, depending on your company, you could argue that the features I just listed are essential.)
3. Nice-to-Have: Company doesn’t need this feature to buy the software, but this feature would be nice if they existed, such as an accounting, analytics, smart factory capabilities (check out A+W Smart Factory), or CRM (customer relationship management) package.

Within Step 2, there are multiple questions you could ask yourself, including but not limited to (depending on your company):

1. What do you need the manufacturing software to do?
2. How easy to use should the fabrication software be to use?
3. What’s your budget?
4. How many employees will use the ERP software on a daily/weekly basis?
5. What reports do you need the manufacturing software solution to develop?
6. How scalable should the software be: One facility or connecting multiple facilities?
7. Do you want a cloud-based system or on-premises system? Windows versus Mac? SQL Server or Oracle? (More on this in Parts II & III)
8. Do your vendors have any requirements they need met?

In Part II, we’ll discuss how to create a short list of candidates and validate that short list. Stay tuned as we work to make sense of the software buying process.

If you have any questions about this blog, flat glass software, window fabrication software, tempering or insulated glass software, or anything else to do with flat glass, window, or door manufacturing software, please contact the A+W team via our contact form here.

*This blog was originally written for the National Glass Association and was replicated on A+W's website for your reading pleasure.