The SoftSelect Business unit’s main mission is to offer tools, methods, and support for enterprise software management (selections, implementation planning/control, and optimization). In enterprise/business software replacement projects, SoftSelect also provides lists of candidate software packages. These lists come from existing research for specific software product categories, such as ERP or PLM, or from custom research for a particular client’s needs (custom research conducted by SoftSelect staff or directly by the selection team using comprehensively documented and tested SoftSelect methods). Since 1996 over 1800 enterprise software selection projects have influenced these processes.

For Software Product Categories (SPCs) regularly monitored (e.g. ERP, PLM, WMS), SoftSelect will:

1. Establish a definition for the SPC so the included solutions are reasonably consistent

2. Develop a comprehensive and consistent list of solution offerings for the SPC (see next section for detail)

3. Collect and maintain appropriate information on listed solutions to enable building a confident candidate list for a specific company seeking an offering in the SPC

Developing a List of Solution Offerings for the Software Product Category (SPC): The following are key points about SoftSelect’s process to develop a comprehensive and consistent SPC list:

• SoftSelect mainly utilizes public information to develop lists of candidate solutions for an SPC. To detect the list is substantially complete the search process observes a reduction in new candidate offerings located considering the incremental effort to locate new candidates.

• The SPC list is a comprehensive group that meets a specific definition for the SPC and is constrained for software packages offered in a particular geography (e.g. solution candidates used in the US and Canada)

• When seeking candidate solutions for an SPC, legitimate solutions may not take the form of a packaged software offering. For this reason, the terms solution offering or solution strategy is used in many places in this document instead of software package.

Developing Appropriate Software Package/Solution Offering Information: Important design attributes of our software product research process are:

• A manageable research collection/maintenance activity that has no dependence on software vendor’s/solution provider’s responsiveness or accuracy

• No barriers to a solution provider’s listing—such as a fee to the vendor

• The resultant data collected enable developing a confident software candidate list for a specific company

High-level indicators of suitability: In the mid to late 1990s SoftSelect's research process mainly focused on software functionality and pricing information and ironically today these criteria are directly avoided for developing a candidate listing (the reasons are in following sections of this document on functionality and cost of software). Instead SoftSelect moved to a research model that monitors the types of companies that have most often used the vendor's software or solution in the last 3 to 5 years. The major assumption in this approach is that software solutions that are most often used by a particular type of company have functionality, technical attributes, and pricing models that are suitable to that type of company. This assumption is increasing accurate when a software vendor has approximately 50 or more implementations (threshold of users to make data more relevant) and has proven to be a solid listing mechanism.  In the eyes of companies acquiring new enterprise/business software these measures are called High-level indicators of Suitability (HLIS). Specifically these measures show the percent of vendor's sales (for a specific software product/solution offering) to:

• Company size ranges (approximately six ranges defined by company yearly gross sales)

• Industries (approximately 40 total and 26 related to manufacturing)

• Manufacturing environment (approximately seven and used for Software Product Categories for which this measure is material)

The raw percentages for the three measures above are a good start, but are not obvious for users to interpret and may not properly highlight the full strengths of software offerings that are more broadly used. For example, a software/solution offering has very broad functionality and therefore has sales in more industries than typical software offerings. This will reduce the product/solution offering's percent penetration into each industry making it appear less industry focused than other vendors. To adjust for this and other factors not immediately visible in the raw percentage we convert the percentages into one of the following Focus Level codes (definitions worded in terms of a company seeking software):

• Level -1: Very high predicted correlation to needs

• Level -2: High predicted correlation to needs

• Level -3: Reasonable predicted correlation to needs

• Level -4: Correlation to needs is not predicted to be competitive when compared to other software packages/solutions in this software product category

Important note: If a software/solution strategy does not have a Focus Level of 1, 2, or 3 (for a particular HLIS criteria) it does not mean that the solution provider’s offering is emphatically not suitable. The Focus Level measures of 1 through 3 show solution strategies that are more likely better candidates to pursue, but other factors such as vendor viability or total cost of ownership can legitimately promote another candidate solution. For this reason the SoftSelect selection process is flexible to equally test any solution strategies that any selection team member believes has merit.

Why Detailed Functionality Data is not Collected

Why Software Pricing Information is not Collected

Technical Specification: SoftSelect gathers information about hardware platforms and software operating systems/databases that software solutions run. This information is becoming less influential as candidate solutions become increasingly visible/available for collaborative workflow with other business systems.   

Vendor Viability: SoftSelect makes a judgment on software vendor general viability based on factors such as:

• Status of their public image (website, advertising, PR, etc.)

• Quantity of new customers in recent years

• Ability of their solution offering to adapt to modern collaborative business processes

• Investment being made in their product offering(s)

• Public information about a software vendor's viability/stability issues

• If there is a known potential sale of the company or product line in the works

The viability factor is discussed more in the section of this document on how SoftSelect develops a list of candidate software packages for a particular company.

Software Research Maintenance

Once entered into the SoftSelect enterprise software research database, all solutions are reviewed at least once every two months. In addition to direct contact with software vendors, we use other sources of information to keep abreast of changes, software product mergers/acquisitions, and new product offerings. These include software reviews in industry publications and feedback from users of SoftSelect enterprise software management process.