4 Major Risks With Selecting Enterprise Software

Engineering an enterprise application with custom software to update a legacy system, integrate with an existing system to increase productivity, or meet other business goals is optimal for all companies. Realizing the importance of communication, understanding, and effort are paramount to its success.

Overconfidence

Overconfidence in an application or of submitted requirements documents causes a blind spot that doesn’t easily endorse asking questions for clarification before or during software implementation, proving to be one of the largest components of software implementation failures. To properly prioritize and optimize the software development cycle as it progresses to completion, concise documentation of business needs and opening communication lines between the software team and requirements’ process owners increases understanding and facilitates productivity, wholly reducing implementation cost.

Keeping up on reporting by revising, updating, and rating requirements per level of importance creates a common communication ground between developers, process owners, and auditors to reduce the work of re-evaluation and the risk of bottlenecking the entire productivity line.

Understanding complexity

The inability to fully understand the complexity of the implementation of a custom software solution can hinder productivity and put the completion of a software solution at risk. Most enterprise software implementation processes cover a very large scope of requirements and can take years of development before they are seamless, which makes pre-packaged software solutions very appealing to some buyers, but implementing a custom solution ensures that a company’s unique processes are addressed.

Getting an understanding of a company’s unique needs and realizing the complexity of custom application solutions come together for added insight into prioritization features that are needed more immediately and increasing the value of continuous delivery. Complexity doesn’t only cover the software solution itself, but understanding the existing network infrastructure and its capabilities ensures that the features of the software solution will be adequately supported.

Recognizing effort

When developing a custom software solution, the amount of effort needed for business requirements to be properly gathered, measured, and implemented by are most always underestimated. Enterprise processes are complicated and implementation of new software will affect the company’s entire ecosystem. Ensuring that the solution accurately aligns with requirements necessitates effort and planning to create a foundation of a successful software application.

Common shortcuts

When making the decision to begin engineering a custom software solution, overconfidence can bind a proposal to an unrealistic deadline that is often proposed to enterprise stakeholders or consumers. In an effort to deliver the software for use by the proposed deadline without properly measuring effort and complexity of the solution, decision-makers can be tempted to take shortcuts that ultimately result in a sub-optimal solution that does not meet business needs.

  • Replicating outdated requirements from legacy systems. Requirements that properly represent current business processes and needed updates, although they could be complex, should take precedence over the implementation of little-used or outdated features since they tend to overcomplicate implementation and skew the project scope.
  • Lacking innovation. Purchasing pre-packaged software and hoping it will satisfy business needs because it’s being utilized by competitors lacks innovation and impedes on the ability to articulate a company’s more unique processes in the application. Selecting software solutions based on market adoption proves to be a safe choice, but could ultimately hinder productivity and growth.
  • Relying on third-party opinions. Pre-packaged SaaS solutions have a one-size-fits-all approach rarely fit with business processes and vendors offer tiers of software packages that incur extra cost for access to needed features with many features that are irrelevant, hindering productivity. Consultants and analysts often have experience with few software solutions and tend to recommend out-of-the-box solutions that they sell or is accepted across the industry without considering a company’s business processes-especially if they aren’t properly articulated in process requirements.

Gathering information about the existing software infrastructure, properly analyzing the size and scope of implementation of the anticipated updates, and documenting the employees’ needs through requirements analysis is necessary in order to successfully implement a software solution that meets business goals. If these core requisites are not properly addressed and maintained, they pose risks to the value of the finished custom application.