We're a professional services firm. We've been using a decades-old, industry-standard ERP system for years which everybody on staff hates. We don't want to hire software engineers to build one from scratch because that's too far outside our competencies. What we would like to do is select the best SaaS applications out there and determine how to integrate them. But there are SO. MANY. A sample scenario: We charge a minimum number of hours when we perform onsite work. If a consultant enters time for an onsite visit which is less than the minimum, the ideal system would: 1. warn the consultant and ask whether this is what s/he wants to do 2. if the consultant says yes, then the system should require the consultant to enter justifying details which get sent to a manager for approval prior to billing With granular business logic like this, we're unlikely to find a single set of SaaS applications that'll do everything we want. How can we even get started with this?
Trying to match up your needs with available cloud apps is a common challenge, especially if you have hardened requirements that may be very unique or tailored to your organization. In that case, barring a 1:1 fit around each discrete app, you'd want to include configuration flexibility (to include solid APIs and/or integration add-ons) in your assessment of potential tools.
You'll definitely need to go through the grunt work of establishing a set of selection criteria and evaluate your potential solutions against that criteria, as well as factoring in the tradeoffs associated with loosening "requirements".
This can be a pretty complex exercise, so you may need outside assistance. But, I'd start by determining what your true critical requirements are and examining whether you can find any 1:1 fits for requirement categories. It sounds like flexibility in app configuration and the ability to develop modular extensions to the app would be important selection criteria (in order to accommodate tailoring options). For capabilities where you find no (or a very weak) fit, you'd want to be able to integrate with apps that you build on a solid, compatible platform-as-a-service offering.
Answered 9 years ago
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