9 Steps to Simplify & Streamline Your Software Selection Processes

Many state and local governments are nearing the end of the 7-10 year lifespan of the average budgeting and performance management software system, causing more and more key-decision makers to explore new budgeting and performance management technologies.

In fact, according to the “2013 Gartner Financial Executives International (FEI) CFO Technology Study,” nearly 60% of CFOs indicated that investing in analytics and decision-making was their top priority, as it should be.

In the past decade, budgeting and financial planning technologies have transformed from error-prone manual data entry tools to an array of advanced analytical, integrated, and sophisticated real-time budget management software solutions, improvements that are making software selection much more difficult. If you couple the challenge of reviewing this plethora of software options with an imprecise, high-level list of new software requirements, selecting the right system that fits your agency’s exact needs is nearly impossible.

In fact, the importance of well-defined quality requirements was further supported by the results of a recent independently conducted industry study of financial executives and key-decision makers in the public sector. When asked to list their top software acquisition impairment factors, respondents ranked their top three as:

– Incomplete requirements and specifications
– Lack of user input
– Changing requirements and specifications

To overcome common software acquisition impairments, it is imperative to put time, effort and thought into your software selection process and, most importantly, establish QUALITY requirements.

In the adjacent infographic (click here to view larger image of infographic), we reveal the nine reasons why detailed, thought through QUALITY requirements are essential to your budgeting software selection process. To read the complete list of reasons in text format, click here.

For more tips on improving your budget and performance management software selection process, visit http://blog.neubrain.com.