Archive for February, 2011

When opening a savings account we focus on how much we are going to get out and how easy it is to access. With the abundance of savings products in the market place we first choose an account by its interest rate and then we ask can we transfer money from one account to another, can it be viewed online, can money be added at anytime and so on. It’s a customer-centred world so we know that there is a lot we can ask for and expect.

If you have a medical registry, research or business project for which you need to collect and secure data you will be considering the software you need to store it. Define the key questions you want your project or research to deliver and decide how you want to analyse, export or display your data. Make sure that your software will maximise the information you get from it thus repaying the time and effort you and your team spend putting data into it.

Your requirements list should be more like a recipe than a shopping list. Include all the ingredients and processing you need to make the outcome a success. Consider and document all your criteria from: your validation checks; to security and user access needs; to the displays required for your suppliers, customers, managers, patients, researchers or students.

Your data can be displayed in a host of different ways. It can be browsed, sorted and searched on the criteria that are useful and meaningful to you. Consider asking for data to be exported in the tables you need for a research paper or in the charts required by your shareholders at your AGM? If you need a statistical analysis to be performed on your data, ask for this to be automated too.

Once you've compiled your initial requirements list, talk to a software consultant who understands your field. Ask for a free consultation to discuss your needs and assess whether or not they have helped you move forward. Are they likeable and easy to talk to and are they able tease out all your obvious but unspoken requirements raising issues from their own experience? Look for signs that they are weighing up all the options for you and are even considering the suitability of another supplier's existing product. Remember that you have many choices for your software just as you do for your savings so identify the criteria that are most important to you and shop around for the best product.