The business vision exists to guide the setting of business goals. The strategy describes how those goals will be achieved and is expressed as business requirements. These are the “real” requirements because value is only created when those business goals are achieved.
Business requirements describe what the new software must deliver to provide value. The software requirements themselves describe how that value will be delivered by meeting those business requirements. Value is realized when the organization uses the new software to achieve its business goals.
Set the stage for value
Wayferry is an independent and unbiased software and ERP selection consulting firm. We are paid by you, our clients, and not by software vendors.
Your interests are not served when consultants are paid by software vendors to recommend software.
Major software purchases like ERP will cost millions of dollars over their useful lives but surprisingly few companies consider ROI before making the purchase. Before a project even starts we work with senior management to define the desired ROI for the new software or ERP system.
The greater the ROI the more urgent the project. Projects with the greatest ROI get prioritized, while those with low ROIs get postponed.
Wayferry has a well-defined and proven software selection process.
We take the software selection work off your hands so that your team has the time to do their normal jobs.
Because we specialize in software selection and have done it many times, we do it faster than your team would.
Our software selection process is specifically designed to reduce implementation risks so you go live as planned and with minimal business disruption.
The Wayferry process is designed to capture all significant requirements in the analysis phase.
Discovering significant new requirements during implementation or going live is one of the biggest causes of projects failing, but by then it is too late.
We use our proprietary software system to manage requirements, handle the RFP and analyze the results. We work faster because routine work is done by the system.
Selection projects are completed faster resulting in an earlier ROI.
Our library dramatically accelerates the development of your software or ERP requirements specification.
The system has advanced decision support features like the heat map gap analysis that allows drilling down and comparison of potential software products in any level of detail.
Vendors store RFP responses to requirements in our library that are reused by them on new evaluation projects.
You can get an idea of how well software or ERP meets requirements even before the RFP is sent to the vendor.
When you do invite a vendor to an RFP the response is faster because most of the work is already done.
A subset of requirements may already have been verified for provisionally selected vendors.
We involve users right from the start of the project and actively create and nurture buy-in. We encourage users to take ownership of the selection process and ownership of the outcome. We build excitement so that employees can’t wait to start using the new software.
Waiting until the implementation to create user buy-in is too late and often fails. It puts the entire project at risk.
When users “own” the new software they have a vested interest in ensuring it works properly for them.
User buy-in and ownership creates the foundation for the change management needed during the implementation.
The value of developing adequate requirements
Align with business strategy
We work with senior management to define how the new software will support the business strategy, identify value drivers and use this to develop the framework for the future way of working with the new software.
This framework is used to generate the business process requirements which are then translated into software requirements.
The framework aligns the software selection project with the business strategy.
When software requirements properly define business needs, our gap analysis measures how well potential software products meet your particular needs.
User interviews
We interview business process owners and users to discover their business requirements and the business reasons for those requirements.
There must be valid business reasons for every requirement. “We have always done it that way” is not good enough!
Keeping users focus on business requirements and the reasons for them avoids those users trying to replicate the old system in the new. It is also the first stage of the process optimization that will be completed in the implementation.
While users know their pain points they seldom have any idea of software capabilities. We explain how modern software can help them be better at their jobs.
This opens users’ eyes as to what modern software can do, develops buy-in and builds excitement.
We explain to users how the new software frees them from routine work and allows them to concentrate on more interesting aspects of their jobs.
We also explain how the new software offers an opportunity for those users to improve their skills.
Capture requirements
Capturing all significant requirements in the initial analysis stage is key.
When no significant new requirements are found during implementation, the risks of schedule delays, cost increases and business disruption on going live are dramatically reduced.
The sooner unknown significant requirements are discovered, the less they cost to satisfy.
Our library has thousands of well written requirements that have been tested and refined over many evaluations.
Well written requirements reduce ambiguities and improve communication with vendors.
Good requirements take a long time to write and using the library reduces the time needed to develop them.
We look at the differentiating features of potential software products and rewrite them as requirements.
This is called the reverse engineering technique and is a formal process to discover requirements you don’t know you need. It is especially useful for discovering the latest features added to software products.
Weigh requirements for importance
For each requirement we capture who wants it, how important it is to them, and why it is important.
Weighted requirements are used to measure how well potential software products meet your particular needs.
Information captured is used to reduce software implementation risks - see Prime the implementation below.
The value of rigorously evaluating software
Vendors respond to your RFP using our online system.
Vendor progress on the RFP is monitored in real time.
Vendors reuse their responses to the same requirements from previous RFPs which dramatically reduces their work. This means more vendors will respond to your RFP and they respond faster.
Our gap analysis MEASURES how well different software products meet your specific needs.
Replace subjective opinion driven decisions with objective data driven decisions. You identify the software that best fits your needs.
When you have backup alternatives, you have leverage when negotiating with software vendors.
As part of the evaluation phase, our scope check verifies that your requirements are matched to what the market can provide.
You avoid the problem of selecting software that seems to do everything but doesn’t do anything well.
If no software products score well enough on the gap analysis, we work with you to decide what functionality should be moved to other systems.
The value of properly selecting software
While the gap analysis makes your software selection, the demo verifies that selection. We work with your team to shortlist products for demo.
We work with you to design software demos to verify specific showstopper requirements.
Your team verifies requirements are met to their satisfaction.
Every software purchase has some compromises. The devil is always in the details.
Subjective decisions are too easily influenced by skilled salespeople. The Wayferry gap analysis helps you to select the software that fits your needs like a “glove fits your hand”.
You avoid buyer’s remorse by knowing the inevitable compromises before you buy.
The value of software negotiation & purchase
Check references and verify RFPs
While only you can satisfy yourself as to the adequacy of a reference, we assist you with our series of reference questions that have been refined over the years.
Comprehensive reference questions probe deeply and uncover if the reference is reliable.
How do you know the RFP realistically represents the software’s capabilities? Trust but verify: We select a sample of showstopper requirements that the vendor claims to fully meet and ask them to supply evidence supporting their claims.
If a vendor misrepresented their software on the RFP that will be exposed by the verification.
Since you discovered the software was misrepresented before the contract was signed you are able to select your #2 choice (and will repeat the reference checks and verification with that product).
We work with professional software negotiators.
Vendors are always selling but your team only occasionally makes big software purchases. It’s not a level playing field! Vendors control sales without buyers even realizing it.
Vendors have spent years optimizing their software contracts to maximize revenue. Professional negotiators restore the balance in your favor and help you get the best software deal possible.
The value of priming the implementation for success
After the selection project is complete we provide an extract of the requirements analysis in WBS (work breakdown structure) format to the implementation project manager.
This is used to create the first draft of the project plan, and to prepare realistic project estimates and schedules.
No software is perfect. Wayferry’s proprietary gap analysis identifies all areas where the selected product does not adequately meet functional requirements.
The project manager can proactively allocate additional resources to prevent these areas from causing implementation delays and business disruption on going live.
Decision latency is the time taken to get questions answered and decisions made, and is a primary source of project delays.
Well written requirements that describe what is wanted, why it is wanted, who wants it and how important it is to them reduce decision latency and help keep projects on schedule.
The weighted requirements gathered in the analysis phase are used to create the customer acceptance tests. The software implementation must pass these tests before going live.
Well written requirements are the basis for well written customer acceptance tests that are difficult to fudge.
Software buyers and vendors can use different terms to describe the same things. Each has their own jargon which hampers the communication so critical to the success of a project.
The evaluation is the one place where the terms used by the buyer are matched to the terms used by the software vendor and implementation team.
Once the new software is in production, the evaluation is used to identify other functional areas that can be brought into production.
This is how the value of your software investment is maximized.
The value of success
With Wayferry helping you navigate the selection process, the new software:
Goes live as planned with minimal business disruption.
Meets user, management and ROI expectations.
Fully supports the organization’s business strategy.
How could an enterprise software project be more successful?
