Checking outside the box

Companies often use checklists to evaluate their IT buying requirements. But these rarely address what the firm actually needs. Brett Humphreys discusses how over-reliance on checklists may lead to poor software buying decisions

The checklist has become a standard part of the evaluation of a potential software purchase. Companies go down a checklist item by item and determine which of their requirements are met by each potential software solution. While in an ideal world this process might work, in reality it generally fails. Companies overstate their requirements while software vendors overstate their capabilities. Making decisions based upon such flawed analysis is unlikely to lead to a good outcome.

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