The Shortlist

Monday December 20, 2010

Seasons greetings to you all

Well, here we are at the end of 2010...

From all of us at Software Shortlist, we wish you a safe & relaxing Christmas and a wonderful New Year! 

May the year ahead bring you much joy & prosperity.

We'll be taking a short break from Thursday 23rd December and returning on Monday 10th January. With big plans for 2011, we're looking forward to re-charging the batteries and hitting the ground running in January.

For many business owners the holiday period also means a chance to step back from daily operations and reflect on the overall performance of their firm and how it can be improved in the year ahead.

As software often has a key role to play in enabling some of these business improvements, today's issue of The Shortlist provides some useful food for thought, including:

1. The top 10 mistakes in choosing business software
2. An analysis of the most popular timesheet features
3. A caution about technical fixes for social problems

That's all from us for now. All the best for the festive season and we'll see you again in 2011.

Cheers!

The team at Software Shortlist

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Top 10 Mistakes In Choosing Business Software

Choosing the right software for your business can be challenging. Although there are best practice guidelines for effective software selection, sometimes it helps to be aware of the pitfalls - the things that can and do go wrong most often.

So, to help compile a useful list of mistakes to avoid, we recently reached out to our LinkedIn community with the question: "What are the top 10 mistakes people make when choosing business software?". Thanks to everyone who contributed their practical insights and experience.

Here is our editor's view on the top 10 mistakes people make:

1. Not defining your objectives and requirements clearly
2. Confusing systems with behaviour (see article below for a perspective on this)
3. Buying into the hype
4. Failing to invest adequately in internal change management efforts
5. Underestimating the setup and customisation efforts needed
6. Not enough consideration of support & maintenance issues
7. Ignoring the hidden end-of-life costs of software
8. Excessive dependence on a single vendor
9. Letting vendors drive the selection process
10. Ruling out some software options too early without good cause
    

What do you think? Are there others that should be here? Have your say on our blog...

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A Technical Fix for a Social Problem

Reproduced with kind permission from Pragmetric, providers of executive level, independent technology consulting. See the original post here.

“A technical fix for a social problem” is a phrase that gets bandied about in security and usability circles over and over again.. but what does it mean for your business?

Often, technical people are inclined to try and solve problems with technology that really aren’t solvable that way.

Let’s say that you decide that you don’t want your staff using Facebook from the office. The technical ‘fix’ for that is to block facebook.com at your web proxy or internet router. While that will probably block most people from getting access to Facebook from the office, it won’t stop those truly motivated to get access to Facebook. There are ‘proxy’ sites that allow access to blocked website, and a number of them have popped up dedicated to getting people access to Facebook. In fact, searching “Facebook proxy” on google returns 214,000 results. If your staff are even vaguely technical (and, in this day and age, who isn’t?), then they’ll most likely be able to find other ways to work around any technical fix you can put in place.

Staff spending work time on personal tasks or websites is a ‘social problem’ for your organisation. Someone who’s inclined towards spending paid time on things that you’re not prepared to pay for is the problem – Facebook is just one manifestation of that. If you start blocking websites, where do you stop? If you block Facebook, do you also block Twitter? What about site’s of a similar nature that you’ve probably never heard of – Orkut, FriendFeed, Jaiku, etc. What about the new ones cropping up every week that even I’ve never heard of?

If blocking sites you don’t want your staff to access becomes your policy, then you’ve just started playing a whack-a-mole game of trying to block every site you don’t want them to go to – and that’s probably a huge list, and not really sustainable.

The social fix is to give your staff reasonable limits, explain why the limits are in place, then police the limits. Your technical people should, I hope, be able to give you a summary of how often Facebook is accessed, and by whom – often, a quiet word in the right ear is better than trying to block it entirely. Then, you’re putting in a social fix that’s backed up by technology.

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The Top "Must-Have" Timesheet Features

Ever wondered which features prospective timesheet buyers consider most important? 

Software Shortlist recently analyzed the data from over 900 timesheet searches on its online comparison service and identified the specific features that were specified most often as "must haves".  Based on this exclusive dataset & analysis, the top ten timesheet features were:

1. Enter time in a weekly view
2. Expense reporting
3. Billable vs non-billable distinction
4. Accounting integration
5. Custom report builder

See our blog article "The Top Must-Have Features for Timesheet Software" for the long list of the 13 top features and details of the analysis. We are also publishing a series of articles (as per the links above) exploring each of the top features in more detail.

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Get A Shortlist of Relevant Software for Your Business

If you're looking for business software, it can be challenging to make sense of the overwhelming number of options available. That's why we're here to help!

To get a free shortlist of relevant options, simply:

1. Submit your requirements on our Get A Shortlist page
2. Talk to us briefly on the phone about your requirements
3. We'll match you up relevant solutions and connect you to talk further

It's a fast, convenient and free way to move your software selection process forward. With a shortlist of great solutions in hand, you'll be well placed to evaluate them in detail and make your decision.

Get your very own custom shortlist now...

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