In the same way that an organisation would not consider developing its own word-processor, there is no commercial advantage in creating non-strategic systems in-house. Examples of areas that are generally not commercial differentiators are:
- Financial accounting
- Management accounting
- Human Resources
- Payroll
- Case Management
Or one all-encompassing system, Enterprise Resource Management (ERP).
Which one?
What were the reasons that made you choose a particular COTS solution, are they yours or were they suggested by the vendor? We take a look at some of the promises made and give words of caution where appropriate.
Quicker implementation time, this may well be true, consider the following:
- Requirements will take longer to capture than with a custom solution, this is discussed below
- Unavoidable customisations will impact the time-line
- Data migration requires significant effort, this will not be reduced by adopting COTS
- Non-standard reports will take time to specify and create
- You may be competing with other clients for vendor resources
Lower costs, this can be true, have you identified all costs:
- Customisations may be excessively expensive, not just in the implementation phase but ongoing operationally
- Upgrades will be impacted by customisations due to increased regression testing, ways to reduce these costs are suggested below
- Separate service contracts to cover customisation will probably be needed
- There may be costly operational impacts when defects arise and remediation is slow
- In-house knowledge levels of the solution may be low and ad hoc business requests may be adversely impacted
Higher quality, remember that a product is only as good as the people supporting it, make sure that:
- The vendor really understands your business and has sufficient industry-savvy and product knowledge resources at their disposal
- You control testing and that there is a high degree of transparency