It may be that in looking for a solution to a business issue you already know what software products you need or you have decided on having something tweaked to suit your company but that's not the end. Making the software ‘happen’ throughout your business has a few hurdles to jump yet.
The first and biggest hurdle can sometimes be the IT department. Then there are the users themselves.
Its a stereotypical joke that the IT department controls the whole company but they have their part to play. All is not lost when using an integration service such as Alinea.
Our role is to review your issue and together agree on a best solution as to which blend of off the shelf and bespoke products is the best solution. Then we can work directly with your IT department to ascertain their infrastructure needs to support the product solution or what is more usually the case, provide a software installation to run outside of the IT remit without compromising security.
Running a software solution externally can make for a much quicker deployment and more flexible communication between yourself and those running the solution. So long as any data passing from the new solution back into the core business is managed to the satisfaction of the IT department this is a normal procedure in deploying new solutions.
Note: A company will commonly resist adding new ‘systems’ to an internal IT infrastructure as it can cause a myriad of problems and security issues, however data being passed into the company infrastructure is a completely different issues and can be managed much more readily by the IT department.
Once your software is successfully installed your Users for whom the software is intended after all will need to know how best to operate it. When planning a software solution make sure you give sufficient time and budget to making sure your users know how to get the best out of the package, bespoke or off the shelf. It could be a great solution but if it is not used to its optimum then any benefits could be lost. Consider the training options open to you for either route you choose.
There are some differences in implementation for an off the shelf software solution and that of a bespoke software solution that are useful to know before you commit to any project.