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Software Selection – The Questions Less Asked

By Guest Blogger Mike Terrien, CPA

Construction Software selection is an expensive, difficult and time consuming process. There is really no controversy about that. Oftentimes companies have very little choice but to look at new construction software for job accounting and project management for several reasons including:

Processing and reporting compliance regulations (e.g. certified payrolls, union reporting, bonding company required reviews and audits, sales tax)
Customer demands (e.g. customer portals)
Internal customer requirements (e.g. executive dashboards, automated exception reporting) and
Increased efficiency (e.g. companies trying to do more with less).

As part of the construction software selection process, there are many factors to consider including: licensing fees, service and maintenance agreements, what is included / excluded with respect to the scope of implementation and associated costs, software company partnerships, features and capabilities of the software, software fit to the industry, company stability and the list goes on.

Equally important and less discussed, however, is the need for the construction vendor to do an evaluation of the company who may be buying its software. For example, the vendor, as part of the sales process, should determine if the contractor has the necessary expertise to implement the software properly. Other issues include whether the company will devote the time and energy it takes to fully utilize the software’s capabilities and whether there will be a software champion who has experience with software selection/implementation.

It is necessary not only to evaluate the proposed construction software and your own organization, but inevitably (in every demo I’ve been a part of at least) you should also be discussing future product enhancements and upcoming features that might be necessary down the road.

There are other important areas to consider which are powerful indicators of the future viability of the software selected:

Examine past target vs actual dates for major product releases.
Ask for the release notes from the last couple of software updates to examine how much the software develops from year to year and how much of the update is adding features vs fixing discovered issues.
Talk to a few current customers regarding the quality of support.
Software companies love to talk about customer retention rates. However, because of the high cost of licensing and changing software this isn’t always an accurate indicator of customer satisfaction. More important, in my opinion, is responding to customer needs.

For example, have them show you how the last update was developed. What processes are currently in place for customer feedback? For example, if they tell you that customer feedback is developed from user meetings – get the minutes or notes from the last user meeting and see if they track ideas and see if those ideas are now in the software. Investigate these areas carefully as most companies buy and use software for 10 years or longer so you will be living with your decision, in all likelihood, for a good long time.

In summary, asking questions in areas software sales folks don’t normally hear will challenge them to prove their solution is the right one for you.

About the Author

Mike Terrien, CPA is the CFO of Hurckman Mechanical Industries, in Green Bay Wisconsin.

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