9 Small Business Software Buying Tips

Leather goods, electrical components, industrial supplies, or whatever your small business is about, sooner or later you will need computer software to efficiently manage your growing enterprise. But before you take the plunge and place and order, consider the following tips to make an informed decision on your small business software purchase.

1. Take a stock of your business growth - As you grow your business needs will change, you will add more staff, add more customers, you might even diversify, etc. Think carefully about the changes your business growth will bring with it. The new software should be able to accommodate the new opportunities, customer demands, etc. This becomes all the more important if you want to be using an integrated system for accounting, reporting, purchasing, reporting, accounting, purchasing, resourcing and scheduling tasks, etc.

2. Is the solution well suited to your industry? - The software you choose should be able to fulfill the requirements unique to your industry. Although not a must have, several software solutions comprise pre-configured industry specific process flows of best practices. As a result users can get better value at low cost.

3. Is the software frequently updated? - Given the dynamic world of business, information technology, Internet, etc, your software company should release frequent updates (viz. patches, fixes, etc.) to keep up with the changes. In addition to improving your performance, using the latest system will allow you to have an edge over your competitors.

4. Where is you vendor based? - If your software supplier is located in your state or country then you can expect more reliable and faster service should you face any trouble using the software.

5. Review the customer support - Find out whether price of the software is inclusive of technical support? Is the support available during your office hours if the vendor is from another country?, How quickly can you expect a resolution from the company if you're having trouble?, etc. In case the customer support is not good, your business could face some serious downtime.

6. Is the software installation fast and easy? - The installation of a business software should be such that is causes minimal disruption to your office operations. If the installation will take up more than a day's time, and both the new as well as the old systems need to run simultaneously, the new system should be productive from the very first day.

7. Will you require new hardware? - All software comes with minimum system requirements. You need to know whether your existing hardware has the capacity to run the new software efficiently or not. In case it doesn't, it means additional costs to buy new hardware.

8. Ask for references - Contact other businesses to learn about their experience of using the software in terms of training, usability, changeover process, installation, benefits, shortcomings, etc. An honest opinion will often allow you to validate the claims made by the software salespeople.

9. Review different proposals - While reviewing different proposals lookout for itemized presentation of costs and the stages of implementation of the software solution.