The Tech Advisor: A Guide to Better Software Selection and Implementation Decisions for Business Managers

The Tech Advisor is a book is for business managers and leaders facing big decisions about software. Read this before you call the salespeople, vendors, and consulting companies.

Sometimes organizations want software that will empower them to step up to the next level of productivity: to automate and expedite a key process, or create a new one; to facilitate collaboration; to connect data with data, people with data, or people with services. Here, you don’t just install a conventional program and go through a few tutorials. Everything changes. People in diverse roles doing a variety of tasks will become part of a new system. Staff, affiliates, and customers will all be affected – and are likely to be interconnected in unfamiliar ways. All activities should coordinate and flow easily. Process that already works well should be enhanced, and new pathways should be built, augmented with powerful tools.  Software initiatives that combine automation and complex human interaction require careful planning and considerable effort. Even individuals close to the situation may miss critical parameters. A deep knowledge of software and organizational process, a talent for innovative design, and an appreciation of the full range of collaborative needs and interactions – are all key success factors. The potential rewards can be huge, but the risks are significant. Software vendors may not tell you everything you need to know, nor will they do your due diligence for you when you plan, select, and implement technology. If you lack the expertise in-house you can make serious mistakes, which can be costly, even devastating. A number of issues might not get the attention they deserve, including:

• Is the technology being considered really the best choice?
• Are you getting the features, capabilities, and scalability you need now and will need in the future?
• Security and change control. What are the risks in the cloud and software-as-a-service?
• Loading, migrating, and connecting with data – an easily underweighted challenge.
• Interfacing with legacy systems. Is the original knowledge still in-house?
• Will the system serve all the users? How about the customers? Do the managers really know what is going on?
• How will you know you are getting high quality, “industrial strength” custom work?
• What about system configuration, training, knowledge transfer, maintenance, and future enhancements?
• Will your organization really “own” the system, or will you remain dependent on the vendor?
• What happens if your vendor goes out of business or the platform you bought is discontinued?
• Have you really identified all the tasks required, their costs, and business impacts?
• Are your preliminary requirements gathering and planning sessions correctly focused, or are you wasting time?
• Will your staff and your business be downgraded by a software upgrade?
• Will your new system last for years, even decades? A premium price tag won’t guarantee it.

This book offers information to help you make good choices and avoid the pitfalls. It explains how a software professional, “the tech advisor,” can come in on a short-term basis to support your planning before you call the vendors. The cost is often offset by time it saves your highly paid managers doing the preliminary work. The tech advisor protects your interests and is your advocate standing between you and the vendors. The book explains how to find and hire one.

Whether or not you hire a tech advisor, the book will help you make wiser technology choices. This book is your tech advisor, and will help you gain your own facility with a professional tech advisor's approaches. It won’t give you all the answers, but will help you ask the right questions, do your due diligence, and apply some of the same methodologies the tech advisor uses. Now, you will better understand the challenges and issues, and can get the timely answers and the powerful, cost-effective solutions you seek.

Patrick Russell has worked with software for over thirty years, and has been a programmer, successful entrepreneur and business owner, system architect, project manager, and practice manager. Currently, he develops original software applications, and helps companies to design and build network- and web-based systems for automating business processes. He also consults as a tech advisor. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1973 as valedictorian, and did graduate work at Princeton and Oxford. However, he got his street credentials developing software for manufacturing control equipment, where he refined his programs in factories and on shop floors. By the end of the 1980s he transitioned into business software and shrink wrapped product development. Over the years he has proven his ability to solve very difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible problems in software. In 1993 he co-founded Cambridge Software Group, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company had many consulting clients that are household names, covering a range of industries, including manufacturing, banking and financial, consumer products, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, data processing, entertainment, business services, electronic media, and retail sales. The company also developed its own line of well respected software products. In late 1997 Cambridge Software Group was acquired by Renaissance Worldwide, a large international consulting company, where Mr. Russell served as Director of Technology. Mr. Russell currently resides in Southern California, where he does software consulting, and recently founded Russell Kennedy Partners with Brian Kennedy. He is a passionate tech advisor, and likes to work with small and large companies. He also enjoys writing and giving presentations. He is the President of the San Diego Chapter of the Institute of Management Consultants, and is authoring the forthcoming book, Holographic Process.