Case Study: Software Selection – Specialty Engineering Contractor – Maryland

The company had an older software product with inadequate support. It was one of four installations of a software product that was on a different relational database than the main system. As a result, the support had waned, as had the interest of the vendor in supporting it. A potential Y2K problem existed. There was also a significant effort needed to produce reports on a side system that required manually entering data each week, most of which already existed in the core accounting system. The Challenge A special report, relatively unique cost and revenue recognition requirements, along with a Canadian payroll meant that the vendor/product short list would be limited. Also, the fact that many of the users needed to have access to the system over a wide area network or via telephone line meant that the user interface and software architecture needed to be considered in the analysis.