Buluran, Joseph Rannie M.Co, Timothy Kevin L.Empino, Romir Gian O.Galang, Roberto Jr. D.Malabanan, Jinno Rafael A.

CASE STUDY 1 – Software Selection

1. Explain the ff.: technology fit, vendor stability, cost, cultural fit, flexibility, and ease of use.What are these and why are they important?

First, let us define the meaning of each terminology:A. Technology Fit – can be traced back to Task-Technology Fit (TTF) theory developed by

Goodhue and Thompson in 1995. It holds that technology, specifically Information Technology (IT) is more likely to have a positive impact on individual performance and be used if the capabilities of the IT match the tasks that the user must perform. TTF consists of 8 factors: quality (how IT can withstand use-and-abuse), accessibility (how accessible IT is for its intended user(s)), authorization (how much verifications or credentials that are required that may serve as hindrances to the user’s operations), compatibility (whether people, software, hardware, culture, etc., it has to be compatible with all factors given), ease of use/training (adaptability measures, learning curves, etc.), production timeliness (if it minimizes risks with regards to meeting deadlines), systems reliability (does it crash? Does it provide the needs of the user?), and relationship with users (does it make life easier or harder?). Each factor is measured using between two and ten questions with responses on a seven point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

Such an approach, in conjunction with utilization, was found to be a significant predictor of user reports of improved job performance and effectiveness that can be attributed to the use of the system in question (or under study).

This theory though was for individual purposes alone and so in 1998, Zigurs and Buckland presented an analogous model operating at a group level, a level in which can be easily related to management and business operations – which brought about later models such as the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).

In essence, Technology Fit can then be defined as to what extent the technology used or proposed is suited to its intended users, to its environment, and even to its intended to-do’s. Relating it to current times, it’s about whether proposing a development of a system wherein Employees may retrieve their payroll details via Short Messaging Systems (SMS) on their cellular phones when in fact the company intended to have such systems only have ten (10) employees. Same can be said if you also try to implement a data-retrieval system that will transfer data from old proprietary systems (such as COBOL) to newer systems when in fact the databases contained in such systems are already irrelevant to the company’s current operations. Bottom line is – is the technology proposed or implemented well-suited for the task at hand? Or are there better alternatives that may enable the business to save more and spend less.

Vendor Stability – is a key element of the software selection process. It’s a matter of checking your vendor the same way real estate people checks the realtors owning the land they plan to venture into brokering. In real estate, the reason you have to check the owners or the company funding the condominium or land project is for assurance – an informed buyer will never buy from a company known to have financial problems, delayed completion of infrastructure, and so on and so forth. Same with software, you just don’t want to buy software whose company or owners are known to sell bluff-wares (all claims – no gains) or are known to drop customer relations after a successful sale. No matter what aspect in life Vendor Stability is applied, it’s all the same – people just don’t want their money to go to unchartered seas.

Assurance begins when a vendor has a good running record. Actually, that’s all there is to it. With the way businesses are growing today, it has become easier to track those with a clean record from those who don’t. A click on the net would do, and if prospective customers learn about the problems other people had with your company, then the reason to why a better one was chosen compared to yours is pretty clear – you need to deliver not only before and during sales, but even on after-sales.

Cost – the value of which an implementation, purchase, selling, using, or acquiring, will give in terms of monetary or non-monetary value to a firm. In project proposals, costs are key factors in deciding whether or not a project is feasible to pursue or not. If costs are relatively low compared to gains, the more feasible the project is. But should the two be interchanged, then the less feasible the project becomes. A good example here would be a highway construction. Suppose costs for building the highway is ten million dollars, while the amount that the Government will pay you is only twelve million dollars, will you still pursue the project? Suppose in the ten million dollar estimate that costs of risks and unexpected expenses are yet to be included – obviously such a project will not be pursued. Such is also a sample of cost-benefit analysis, wherein firms may justify whether the costs needed to earn benefits is actually higher or lower than that of gains.

Cultural Fit – pertains to how persons may like or dislike their job within the organization due to either differences or similarities with the way people wants to work and how the firm wants these people to work. To put it simply, imagine you’re a Web Designer who prefers to design on his own pace and loves to design pages based on your own unique theme. When the company hired you as a Web Designer, you thought you could do the same – but when you submitted your first set of designs, the firm instantly rejected it. A lack of the company’s color, a missing icon, a wild-themed page that doesn’t simply suit the formalistic aura that the business has – and in short, your way of doing the designs simply is wrong for the firm. So then you are forced to give designs that they want and they believe they think is right – and consider that you’re not the type who’s fond of being subdued – what happens? Your morale goes low, you lose interest in your job, and pretty soon, you’ll find your way out – only to find out that in your next job, the company that hired you next loved the designs you did for the company that restricted you to do such designs. Such is the main thought of cultural fit, how people matches with how your business goes is never to be taken lightly by any firms – it should be observed and researched intensively when creating teams that would serve delicate business needs in the future.

Flexible – in business terms, it’s the capacity of people to easily find backup plans, emergency plans, or alternatives should an unexpected event occur. It also refers to how a person can perform equally on different platforms or environments. Such can also be applied to software as well. An example here would be a web browser. Internet Explorer (IE) is known to be less flexible as compared to Mozilla Firefox, and Mozilla Firefox is known to be less flexible as compared to Opera. Such judgments are based on the ability of these browsers to function in cross-platform conditions or even on an entirely different platform. IE can only operate in a Windows Operating System (OS) Environment as compared to Mozilla Firefox which can operate in both Windows and Linux and as compared as well with Opera which can operate in Windows, Linux, and on mobile platforms as well.

Ease of Use – in layman’s term – how easy it is to use a product. Ease of use is a key factor in software selection and software proposals in a sense that if the program’s intended user finds difficulty in operating the program, the less productive they become and the more that your program becomes an inconvenience rather than convenient – a waste rather than a solution. Example: suppose you simply need a tool to quickly peel apples, and you were offered with a technology that requires you to press hundreds of buttons before it works. While you press the buttons, your friend has already peeled one apple for himself, and all your friend needed was a peeler, while you bought a $100 technology that served more of an inconvenience in your part.

These terminologies are important for they are key factors in the software selection phase. You cannot simply go straightforward on buying or implementing software without conducting a study first – how its intended users will use it, how it will solve business processes, what it can prevent, and so on and so forth.

2. When evaluating software it is important to know if the software is at the beginning or end of its product life. Why? What is a "product life"?

It is important to know the Product Life Cycle because this would give when would be the introduction of the product to the market and the facing out of the product of to the market.

A product life cycle is a systematic approach of designing and analyzing on how the product could penetrate the market and maintain its good status in the market.

The project life cycle has 7 phases 1. Identifying problems, opportunities and objectives2. Determining requirements3. Analyzing the needs4. Designing5. Developing and documenting6. Testing and maintain7. Implementing and evaluating

During the software selection process, it is important to know the beginning and end of the product life because the business cannot afford to implement software now and find that a better one or an updated version will be released in a week's time. Identifying the life cycle of particular software will help a business avoid abrupt scrapping or upgrading of systems and wasting money in the process.

3. What is an "implementation partner"? What is a project management approach? And what does it mean to "understand the business"?

An implementation partner is the one who supports a close working relationship between company and systems integrators who can provide integration and implementation services for their projects. They are the one who spends time in dealing with the requirements and matches over the specific requirements of task/projects. They are the one who assist you to support all necessary works to pursue desired project. Implementation Partner leads projects to help organizations change processes.

Project Management Approach

Project Management Approach is somewhat a guideline for project managers in dealing with their projects at hand in order for them to have an effective project management. There are several kinds of Project Management Approaches. The first is the traditional approach; it is a step by step process that needs to be completed. There 5 components which traditional approach has namely: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and completion. Another approach is the RUP [Rational Unified Process] – iterative software development process framework created by Rational Software Corporation that was manned by IBM.

To understand a business simply means that you should know how to fit and communicate to the world you are into, the environmental surrounding you have. Another which is to understand how your business works. Simply means that you should have an analysis of your business. One of which is having a TOWS/SWOT analysis, to identify every threats, opportunities, weaknesses, and strengths.

It is important that you do this analysis for the company better well of their products and services. Taking information from the environmental analysis and separate them into internal issues (strengths and weaknesses) and external issues (opportunities and threats)

4. Package cost is rarely the largest part of the total project cost. Upfront costs that should be considered include costs such as the package software, additional hardware or upgrades, implementation costs, conversion, and training and but ongoing costs such as the annual maintenance fees, modifications, and upgrades cannot be ignored.

Explain and describe the costs mentioned above. Why is it important to know these?

Package cost, in layman's term, is the cost of an entire offer. In buying an electronic gadget, the package cost would be the gadget's main unit plus the accessories needed to be able to continuously use it (charger, manual, headset, etc.). In a food catering service, it would mean the set of meals, the drinks, and optionally, the sound system, which is all totaled as a package cost. In terms of construction though, package cost may only refer to the cost of executing a particular project. Additional costs, such as costs for permits, risk expected costs, insurance costs, and even warranty costs (after finishing a project, there's normal a warranty period to ensure customers that the structure built has its integrity checked thoroughly, if not, it will be repaired by the construction builders).

The above mentioned example with construction can be related to software as well. In implementing software or IT systems, the cost of the package (building the software and delivering it to its customers) is never the largest part of the total project cost. Additional software required to make the product work (database software, drivers, etc.), hardware (if it requires a modulator-demodulator, routers, data centers, servers, etc.), the costs of implementing the software (amount of time that the business may have to shut down its server to update it may incur costs for the company), conversion costs (costs involved in converting the company's database for example to a better database system), training (the more complex the program becomes, the more costs in training its intended user).

Most of the time though, aforementioned costs are relatively menial compared to the costs of maintaining, modifying, and upgrading a system. Based from different studies, projects that failed to capture the exact needs of a business tend to spend more in repairing the software since modifying, maintaining, and upgrading the system would mean another set of server downtime, another set of training for the users, and the list goes on. This is why accurate package costing and project costing requires a lot of research and risk expectancy variables. Being unable to make a good estimate in pricing and costs will result in the implementing company's loss. Bottom line is, if you can't price your product right, and you can't get the product going right, then you simply won't be able to deliver.

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