Suitability not price, should be the criteria for selecting software

The cost of software has come down drastically in last few decades. This could perhaps be one reason why some companies do not spend enough time ensuring the software meets their requirement! There is no point in blaming the vendor later when the buyer itself spends no time ensuring suitability.

While looking at software price, many forget the cost of time and human resources wasted in training, installing, commissioning and actually using the wrong software! What to say of savings that the right solution would have brought in and it's contribution towards employee morale!!

And yes, the mess created when it is discovered very late in the game that the software was simply not suitable for the company's requirement, can only be imagined!

Example:

A hotel has a rule of giving overtime in full hours like 1 hour, 2 hours etc. Further, an hour OT is given only if employee works for 60 minutes or more. No OT is given in this hotel if extra time worked is less than the full hour, even if it is 59 minutes. In other words, they do not round off, they truncate to full hour.

Unfortunately their "FREE with Reader" software could only round off to 30 minutes! Their accounts department realised this after one month of system going operational!

Who is to be blamed? Purchase department? HR department? Timekeeping office? Accounts department? Supplier?

It would not be wrong to lay the blame squarely on the doorstep of management, which allowed the culture of just looking at price and buying without first ensuring suitability. It is management's responsibility to impress upon their buyers, not to look just at price, but first find out whether the product is suitable for their company or not.

TAS2000 time attendance software can calculate overtime with (a) rounding off (b) truncating and (c) as is, with no truncation or rounding. Moreover, the truncation or rounding can be to 15 minutes, 30 minutes or full 1 hour. Hence an extra work of 40 minutes can be calculates as 0, 30, 40, 45 or 60 minutes of OT - depending on what your company requires.

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