Effective quantitative business software selection: Tools and techniques

This paper outlines a recommended methodology for selecting business software applications for any size of enterprise. Given the number of options available for business applications in the software market for a functional area (e.g. human resources, finance, operations), a structured technique for assessing features against the enterprise's custom requirements is clearly necessary. A weighted requirements assessment against the features of the software makes sense, but runs into difficulty when attempting to compare cost of ownership between applications. An algorithm is presented in this paper to compare the applications both in features and in total cost of ownership which will result in a single quantitative measure that can be compared across the business application options. An implementation of this methodology by the author can be found at http://espanalytics.com.