Functional consulting

Functional consulting contains the following subjects:

• Evaluation
• Analyse problems / change system

Evaluation

With the experience of over 13 years in the market, we are one of the leading companies that started in the early days of E-Commerce, PIM and CMS. We have seen different international systems, which we evaluated by our self and together with our customers. We also implemented several systems since the beginning. With the experience and the close connection to the different software vendors, exhibitions and web-ex session, we have a good overview of the market and the systems.

For a software evaluation we have a clear strategy:

1. Requirements of the new solution
2. Define long list of software vendors
3. Inform long list members including timing, send out NDA (non disclosure agreement)
4. Send out RFP
5. Define short list
6. Prepare presentation with customer specific data and workflows
7. Presentation by Software vendor
8. Reference visits / reference calls
9. Advice from Softlution

  

Doing an evaluation with Softlution, you have the following benefits:

• Good market knowledge and overview of Softlution
• Evaluation period is shorter than done internally
• Internal resources from different departments less used
• Experience of Softlution:
  • We know the pain points in the application and implementation
  • We ask the right questions
  • Software vendors presents more honest than to a prospect who is new in the theme
• External consultant cost money – but drives the process quicker than internal evaluation
• Moderator between the targets of different departments (sales versus marketing,…etc.)
• Decision is confirmed and documented by an external independent consultant

“The cost for an independent and qualified Evaluation Consulting is not high, because we learnt a lot in these phase and have done specification work for the implementation. The internal people were used only for a minimum – so that the daily business were not influenced” ,
said Tim Meier – IT Manager Hummel about the evaluation.

Analyse problems / change system

Beside the implementation of a new system, we see more and more in the market to evaluate if the existing system or the upgrade to a new version of an existing system makes sense due to the requirements of the customer. Sometimes it helps to enhance the existing solutions with third party tools or scripting tools.

Benefits

• Invest into the right system (future wise)
• Avoid unnecessary changes to a new release
• Optimize solutions