By Hillel Glazer, Entinex, Inc.

1. First and foremost, what are you trying to accomplish with technology?
Do you have a well-defined need for technology to do something you can’t get done?  Too many companies jump to the conclusion that technology will "solve their problems" but they haven’t yet put their arms around exactly what problem technology will solve. Technology is like raw material which, when sitting on a shelf, doesn’t do much.  It needs to be fashioned into something that makes it into what we want it to be.  For businesses, technology needs to be given a specific purpose and instruct-ions so that it can address the business’ needs.  Technology can’t figure out what you need it to do for you simply because it’s installed.

2. Are your current business processes effective/efficient?
Technology can do great things, but if a business process doesn’t work before you implement technology, automating your process won’t fix it.  Investigating the answer to this question is a good sanity-check of whether you’ve got the first question right.  If we think of technology as synonymous with automation, automating a broken process will only make that broken process happen faster and/or more often.  Make sure your business process would work equally correct whether it’s done with computers or by passing index cards around.

3. Is your business ready for technology?
If technology is going to solve specific business needs, are you ready for what will happen? If technology solves one problem, will it just create a bottleneck somewhere else? For example, if technology solves inefficiencies in the order taking process, could your business keep up with the increased orders? You may need to adjust how you do those things that provide input to or receive output from the newly technology-enabled part of your business --- or you might just find yourself abandoning your new investment because it’s just an island of efficiency in a sea of molasses.

4. What will the role of technology be in your business?
This is a business strategy question. Is technology going to let you do "more with less?" Will it reduce busy work? Improve quality? Will it add to your services and capabilities? Will the technology provide business intelligence to company leaders or does it make an admin’s job easier? Will it do both? As simple as this seems, it’s quite significant. The answer will (1) determine the scope and penetration that technology will have and (2) will divulge the complexity of the system and (3) will impose many of the requirements for a system. It will also indicate whether the system you are looking for can be pulled off the shelf or would need to be built from scratch.

5. Will the technology accurately reflect how work gets done?
This consideration is about whether you’ve addressed the relationship between efficiency (does something for little time or money) and effectiveness (does something well).  A business may have implemented technology that effectively accomplishes a task only to learn that it actually reduced the overall efficiency of the work.  One case is of a company that added a system into which all orders were entered so they could later be tracked and referenced.  But they didn’t eliminate the need for orders to be written on a paper form first.  Net result: before technology, one-step process; with technology, two-step process.  The system was abandoned tens of thousands of dollars later and in the words of one executive, they haven’t revisited it because they "tried technology before and it didn’t work."  Sure it didn’t work!  They didn’t look at technology in the context of all the work being done on each order, they only looked to solve a narrow effectiveness need at the expense of efficiency.

6. Are you willing to change how you work in order to implement technology?
Sometimes technology can solve problems only if you wrap your business around how the technology works.  This can likely save you money if the alternative is a custom system.  If you are not able/ready to alter work practices, the technology solution may be more complex and costly. Sometimes that’s your only choice.  A happy medium can also be worked out, but it is tricky and risky.  At best, you’ll have incurred a non-recurring cost to pay for it in work hours --- if not development hours --- and at worst, you’ll incur recurring hours in every-day process "work-arounds."

7. Will the technology solution scale with your business?
If technology works well at your current level of activity, then you want it to work well at other levels of activity, whether higher *or* lower. A common mistake when specifying technology is to look at the constraints and limitations of your business as they are today and apply them to what technology will do. This will result in technology that is limited by design. The same mistake is made when only looking to solve business needs as the technology looks today. This would result in a business that is limited by technology. Either scenario stalls a business and causes your technology investment to be sunk.

8. How much and when do you expect a return on investment (ROI)?
This is why so many IT departments work for corporate CFOs.  Technology costs money. Usually, it costs A LOT of money.  If there isn’t a clear gain to the business (and in most cases that gain must be realized very soon!) then go back through the list and re-visit some of the earlier considerations. A business must be able to see something for having invested in technology.  If the ROI is far away or hard to calculate, then more than likely, the need has not been clearly defined, the solution has not been cleanly integrated, or something else on this list is amiss.

9. Do you have the infrastructure to support the technology?
All too often, companies think they can just wind technology up and let it go.  But in truth, there are significant issues regarding what happens after the technology is delivered.  Questions of maintenance, user support, upgrades, defect correction, new functionality, intellectual property and licenses.  These considerations influence the solution in technical terms as well as financial.  They influence the way in which technology will be used and the role it will play in the company.  How reliant do you want the company to be on the technology or the vendor who provided it? How much responsibility do you want to assume and at what cost?

10. Finally, can you effectively articulate your business in technology terms?
Can you describe what you want to get from a technology provider in terms that give you what you want, need, and will use?  Does your description give the vendor enough information to accurately estimate when it will be delivered and how much it will cost? Are you ready to go directly to a specific technology vendor?  Will you need a full-service IT firm to handle the entire project?  Will you need to perform some internal process analysis before seeking a technology solution?  Some vendors only provide product, some only consulting, others provide all of the above but at significant cost or other risks of involvement.

You’ll want to move forward after considering the above list and those resulting from combining items.  Cost-efficient and productive technology projects are those that keep a steady pace facilitated by allowing technology to make progress without languishing in protracted decision-making.  It’s best to have these decisions made before you begin.

Hillel Glazer: Entinex, Inc., Baltimore - Washington | 877-ENTINEX | http://www.entinex.com