Providers without a development focus typically do not benefit from your long-term satisfaction,
and are often unable to provide the required resources for a successful implementation and on-
going maintenance.
Ensure that the provider has significant and provable development experience in their own right.
All too often providers are either just selling the software, or are more interested in selling related
products. One very obvious indicator of such an organisation is an increase in urgency at the end
of any quarter. Sales organisations are notoriously influenced by quarterly sales goals. As such,
they are not often interested once the sale is over, unless they are trying to sell you more
software.
Case studies and success stories are a very common method of promoting a product. It is
important to investigate whether the provider themselves, or another company, has actually
performed the work in any such examples they refer to. Ask outright what their involvement
was, if necessary. Too often providers have had nothing to do with the actual work, or perhaps
they merely contracted in another provider. In either case it is easy for a provider, whether
intentionally or unintentionally, to mislead potential customers into believing they have a greater
experience than they do.
Be particularly wary of providers who claim no development experience is required to implement
a solution. We have never seen such software - if it existed, sales would be unstoppable!
Development of a system of any complexity requires development skills. The effective use of
software of any kind requires competent advice, at the very least.
1. Where does the Solution Provider fit in?
