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Getting Some Things Right the First Time
We did a lot of things right.
Starting with 22 candidates, we whittled the options down to two finalists in just a couple of months. It took us another six months to choose our vendor. The most critical factors were the candidates' corporate culture, their industry knowledge and the functions integrated into their product line. Functionally, the final two companies were very competitive with each other. Cost, always a factor, would be a matter for negotiation.
Balancing our successes and setbacks, we still believe we made the right decision in choosing Intuit Inc.'s Eclipse. The vendor's industry knowledge was as strong as we'd hoped. Our ability to conduct business electronically with our trading partners has already provided significant labor savings. We can now move from order creation to invoice payment with minimal human intervention. Complex transactions, many unique to the hard-goods industry, work as advertised. And on several occasions when we needed to meet the new demands of our vendors, these vendors said, "We've worked with [Intuit] Eclipse on this. No problem."
Even this early in the game, we have seen the benefits of fully integrated products. Document imaging, workflow queues and radio frequency-wireless warehouse management functions are all completely integrated into the software. Having a single database and one code base prevents errors. The similarity of screens and functions improves user efficiency. But the major benefits will accrue when the IT group doesn't have to wrestle with reintegrating software from different companies at each new release. It's no longer our problem; it's theirs.
But sometimes we weren't so sure we had made the right choice. After nine of our branches and our back office had been converted, we discovered our version of the software had scalability problems that prevented us from adding additional users. Going in we knew our installation would be the largest of this particular version, but we had accepted the assurances that the product would scale. When we met to discuss options, no one was smiling.
Fortunately, we never got to the finger-pointing stage. We were pleasantly surprised by Intuit's approach; delivery of the new version isn't canceled, only delayed. We moved forward with a previous version of the software that provided all the functionality of the new release but was character based rather than graphical.
Whenever things looked shaky, I reflected on the contract that kicked off our partnership. Did we negotiate what we needed? No matter how good the contract, recovering costs from a failed software implementation is nearly impossible. If it's true that the best contract is one you never have to look at, we did OK.
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