Selecting the Right Technology for your Business by Elizabeth K. Kilungu

Before making a choice on the right technology to implement for your business it is very important to outline your business goals, needs and processes. The right technology can be a tool to grow your business by improving efficiencies and lowering operating costs. The selected technology should add value and be aligned to business needs to achieve your company’s goals. The wrong choice can quickly become costly and time-consuming.

These are some ideas to keep in mind when choosing the right technology.

What do we do?
Evaluate what the business does and its strategic goals. Define needs that support those goals.

Examples:
Goal: Increase Revenue
Business need: Market our products to potential customers to increase sales

Goal: Achieve Customer Satisfaction.
Business need: Provide customer support in a timely manner

How is it done?
Examine current business processes and write down the day to day, monthly, quarterly and annual activities. Map out process work flows; identify dependencies between activities and tools used.  Consider future processes to accommodate growth, competition, mergers or regulatory compliance policies. Engage those who are most familiar with processes to get their input. Make a note of what works well, redundancies, gaps and challenges. This is an opportunity to streamline processes.

Example:
Business process: Marketing sends advertisement mail-outs to customers every month
Future process: Marketing needs to send advertisements via multiple channels several times a month.
Challenges: Customer list is stored in different systems
Redundancies: Customer information is duplicated resulting in customers receiving multiple mail outs.
Gap: Sending mail-outs only limits the potential customer base


What do we need?
List the identified processes and provide high level details for what is expected to support it. These are referred to as “requirements”, have a reason that ties back directly or indirectly to a business need. There could be several requirements to support a process.

Example:
Business need: Market our products to potential customers to generate sales.
Process: Send advertisement mail-outs to customers every month

Requirement: I need customer contact information i.e. names, physical and email address, important dates (for special occasions)
Why: The contact information is necessary to communicate with our customers

Requirement: I need to send emails to customers bi-weekly.
Why: To announce upcoming sales

Requirement: I need to send brochures to customers quarterly.
Why: To provide details on available products

What is important?
Prioritize the list of requirements by assigning each to one of these categories: 1 “must have” is an essential function;  2 “nice to have” is a want but not a need;  and 3 “low” a desired function but can do without it.

Example of requirements assigned to the categories:

“Must have”   I need to have customer contact information i.e. names, mailing and
                        email address, dates
                        I need to send emails to customers bi-weekly.
                        I need to send brochures to customers quarterly.

“Nice to have”  I would like to advertise on social networking sites i.e. face book and
                         twitter
                         I would like to advertise with posters

 “Low” I would like to send customers video and audio advertisements


How do I choose?
Focus on reviewing products that have features that support at a minimum the “must have” requirements. During the evaluation simulate different business scenarios to see how the selected products would work. Be open to performing tasks in a different way to automate processes to improve productivity and quality. Make sure to use several common and unique scenarios on different products. Consider dependencies and integration with existing systems. Inquire on how the product could provide a solution for gaps and challenges identified in the processes.

How much will it cost?
Perform a cost vs. benefit analysis to determine how the proposed technology will add value to your operations to make it worth the investment. The cost for a product may be low however support and maintenance fees can be high or vice versa. More expensive does not necessarily mean it’s the best solution. Once a solution is found that meets the needs of the business select the product.

Figure 1:Process for selecting the right technology


Recommended resource
Provides reviews and compares different technology products http://www.toptenreviews.com/

You can add comments to this article or contact Elizabeth directly. Her contact information is listed below
Elizabeth K. Kilungu
Lizk2008@yahoo.com