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Finding a good software house on the market requires your time and commitment. Among many offers, it can sometimes be tricky to choose the most optimal solution for your company at first glance. To make a good choice, it is worth to book an in-person or phone consultation, which will help you to make the decision about working with a certain software house. It is important to think about what you should discuss during such consultation. Here are 9 things you should know before your meeting takes place.
1. What processes should your system streamline?
This is the first and most important question you should ask yourself. Are you looking for a system for managing customer relationships, warehouse or supply chain? If you define this need, it will be easier to discuss it with the software house representative, so they can suggest the best solution.
2. How many people will be using the software?
When requesting a quotation from a software house, it is important to establish how many employees will be using the application. It is one of the factors that determine the direction of the software development. Our bespoke applications can be utilized by many users as we put a big emphasis on the software scalability - the system adapts to a growing amount of data.
3. What levels of authorization should be available in the application?
At the initial stage of defining your needs, think of whether all the users should be given the same resources, or if the levels of authorization should differ for different groups or individuals. It should apply mainly to ways of entering, editing and deleting data. Providing different levels of authorization is especially popular for applications such as ERP or MES.
4. What kind of data should fall into each module?
At this stage, it is not necessary to define the amount and complexity of data precisely, as your personal advisor will help you with that later. However, before the first meeting with a consultant, it is important to know, more or less, what modules and parameters you will need to reflect the processes in your company, It will serve as a base for designing the application at the later stages.
5. What information should be shown in the tables?
When choosing modules and parameters for your solution, it is worth to think how the tables should look like and what data these should show. What parameters are the most important and should be shown in the default view? Or maybe you'd prefer to manually choose the displayed data each time you log into the application? Let us know as we plan your solution so we can create the most optimal application for your needs.
6. What pieces of information should be included in the customer profile?
Deciding on the parameters that should build your customer profile will allow us to design a solution that will serve as a customer database. If the main aim of your system is not optimizing the customer relationship management but rather streamlining warehouse management, you should establish which details are key in this respect. In this way, your solution will increase your efficiency from the moment you start using it.
7. Should your application synchronize with external systems?
When approaching a software house to develop a custom application, ask yourself if your employees use any solutions that would streamline the processes in your company when integrated with your new software. Examples of applications that can be integrated with your new bespoke system would be mail, warehouse or invoicing software.
8. Will you need to download data from your application?
If you know that you will require this option, we can ensure that you can export data from each table or module to chosen file formats. It is worth to determine what file formats will be best for you. Our clients usually choose to export data to CVS, PDF or DOC files. Types of data are usually exported are a list of invoices, a contacts list, warehouse documents, etc.
9. What may be the potential direction of the future development of the system?
Sometimes it is not easy to answer this question but it is a good idea to think about it in reference to the development strategy for your company. For example, if you plan to increase your stock levels or hire more people in the future, it is worth to inform your advisor about it so it is included in the documentation of your project.
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See our work:
Intranet - E-commerce - UK, US, Brazil, Singapore, Russia, Turkey, UAE, Poland
Bespoke Manufacturing Execution System with extra modules of WMS and APS - Wroclaw. Poland