Tag: requirements

Back-office vs. Front-office Pros and Cons; Four Points to Think about When Implementing a Professional Services Solution

Back in the day when computers first became common in businesses, accounting was the first part of the business that became “computerized”.  Many reasons caused this, but as time passed and computational complexity increased, these first accounting systems morphed into “Enterprise Resource Systems” (ERP) that allowed businesses to build on top of these first accounting systems in order to automate their other functional areas.  Inventory, Sales Order Processing, Purchasing, Service Management, Manufacturing and Professional Services functions were added as modular pieces of functionality that used the core accounting system as its base.  ERP systems proliferated and became the automation standard for businesses to scale, become more efficient and glean visibility into complex costing and other financial metrics. 

Read More »
December 22, 2015

Five Steps to Keeping Software Selection Focused

I often speak with owners, managers and staff at organizations struggling with growth or a changing business model who sense “things are out of control” and believes there “must be a better way” to manage their business.  Many reach out to technology as a corrective path to this “better way”.  With so many different technology solutions on the market, each offering a countless number of unique attributes, sorting through them and selecting the right solution for your organization can be an extremely time-consuming and even mind-numbing task.  I’ve often seen this process become unfocused, frustrating your attempts to improve things.  I have boiled a technology selection process to five focused steps.

Read More »
February 16, 2015

Making Your Software Work for You: Dynamics CRM

Part of our job here at KTL Solutions is to show or demo business solutions to our clients. These solutions can range from Budgeting/Reporting, AP Automation, Warehouse Management, to Customer Management software. One of the first requirements we hear from most customers is that they need the software to work for them, not the other way around.

All businesses are unique, and everyone has a different way of conducting business. Established organizations have processes already in place. These processes can be extremely difficult and disruptive to the entire business if they have to change to accommodate a new software solution. More to that point, it does not make sense to purchase a “solution” that requires you to change the way you do business. Software is an investment. It takes money, time, and man power to implement a solution so at the end of the day it should work for you, not the other way around.

Read More »
January 29, 2015

How to Build Those Perfect Requirements

As a first step to any project, gathering and understanding requirements is vital to your success; and yet we spend little to no time on this very important process. Identifying and involving the appropriate stakeholders during the requirements phase is just as important as eliciting those perfect requirements.

I spent many years as a business analyst, and I have found that for me the most effective way to elicit requirements was to conduct requirement workshops. In this workshop, I identify specific topics on my agenda and pick stakeholders with clout, i.e. those that are well versed in their specific business units. Also, I push for using stakeholders from different business units to give the workshop the benefit of multiple perspectives.

Read More »
September 30, 2014