IT solutions for business have played a pivotal role in making organizations more innovative, and, thus, more competitive in the market. A proper software solution is more than just a way to automate a routine business process. In most cases, IT solutions today are the core of an enterprise’s infrastructure.
An IT solution for business is intended to address a specific business need. This is typically a process that’s burdensome as it is now; too slow, too expensive, too comprehensive, etc. Organizations that opt for an IT solution expect it to innovate their business process(es). The goal is almost always to improve the bottom line by enhancing workflow.
If you’re thinking about how to develop a robust and truly useful system for your internal operations or international sales, read up on the success factors of an IT solution that you need to consider before hiring a software development vendor to build it for you.
1. Clear business need
There can be an IT solution for any business workflow involving data and humans. You need to clearly understand what business problem you’re trying to solve with your software, whether it’s reducing the amount of paperwork being processed between departments to improve quarterly reporting, or consolidating the third-party tools your organization uses for finding and managing sales cycles. When you clearly define the problem that needs solving, it’s easier to digitize and/or automate it.
This is a serious challenge for many organizations. Computools offers free consultations with business process automation (BPA) experts to help you understand the biggest bottlenecks and what can be done to remove them.
2. Requirements and specifications
After identifying a core bottleneck and vision for solving it, it’s time to break the discovery and development processes down into phases. The Agile methodology is the most effective way to run software engineering teams. To execute a high-functioning workflow running on Agile, pre-planning, and analysis are needed. Agile is a flexible methodology allowing you to change features and functions; however, a well-groomed backlog with all desirable features you would like to see in your system (so-called ‘Software Requirements Specification’) by the end of MVP or even 2 or 3 releases after is an effective safeguard against the consequences of changing the requirements before certain milestones.
Computools promotes the idea of conducting a Discovery phase, a pre-development software planning and analysis stage that helps you shape your vision into a specific product. Consulting on what functionality better aligns with your business needs and offering alternatives if you prefer omitting or adding one or another feature is one of the ways the company assures quality.
3. Realistic timeline
The more complex the solution is, the longer it takes to develop. There’s a common misconception that a high-functioning product can be developed in 3-6 months. It’s important to understand that even if a similar product already exists, it’s not so simple to “replicate” it. The first tangible milestone is the MVP. The purpose of an MVP is to bring you business value using only the features and functionality needed to start benefiting from the software as soon as possible. When agreeing on roadmaps and deadlines, express your desires, but also consider what your software development partner is suggesting as realistic expectations.
Computools provides you with estimated costs and timelines to help you better gauge when you’ll be able to start benefiting from your new software solution.
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The issue of effective management is a non-technical one and is thus frequently neglected or underestimated when it comes to the success of IT projects. Here, a caveat may be on either side.
• The software development partner may face unforeseen difficulties implementing third-party integrations or building new features on legacy code.
• The Product Owner may face challenges related to consistency on what features and functionality are considered the most important during the development phase.
Whatever the case, it’s important that the software vendor partner provides a dedicated manager responsible for high-level coordination and explanation between both parties (the Product Owner and the dedicated software developers working on the project).
Computools solves this by offering a dedicated Project Manager along with bi-weekly project demos to present how your solution is developing.
5. Tech talents
The fifth of the success factors of your future IT solution is the tech talent working on your IT solution. Organizations of different sizes and cultures prefer different models; however, the most important thing aside from technical expertise is how well professionals on teams get along. Poor cohesion can result in delayed development times and in many cases, poor development quality.
Computools solves this bottleneck by offering a dedicated team experienced in your desired tech stack that already has team cohesion. This cohesion and technical expertise is the formula needed for high-level software development done on time and within budget.
Should you have more inquiries into digital transformation technologies that help SMEs build better IT solutions, please email us at info@computools.com.
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