Software acquisition refers to the procurement of software and the necessary measures. It is a subfield of software engineering, or more precisely IT resource management. One sub-task is to determine which required software parts are already available on the market, i.e. can be procured (standard software), and which must first be developed in-house (individual software).
The purchase of software often requires high investment costs. It is often a measure for the implementation of strategic decisions, for example with significant changes to business processes. A structured, rational and systematic approach in the selection of standard software is therefore necessary and serves to avoid high time and financial expenditure (e.g. for the later necessary redevelopment of missing functions). This requires a clear presentation of the advantages and disadvantages of the individual solutions, especially if or because several alternatives are usually available in the form of competing software systems.
While in the individual development of software, the requirements are determined and taken into account within the framework of requirements management, in the case of the acquisition of software (through purchase or licensing), the usually already finished software must be evaluated within the framework of a systematic decision-making process. Such selection projects can be carried out by carrying out a benefit analysis, also known as scoring. This is not about inventing possible alternatives, but about finding solutions offered on the market.
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Numerous companies offer their services to assist with the procurement and selection of software. Depending on the importance, scope and area of application of the software to be purchased, the task of software acquisition can be relatively simple (for example, in the case of software for a narrowly defined, possibly only personal functional area or group of users), must involve several participants or even have to be set up as a large-scale project (for example, software decisions for central functional areas in a large company).
Selection Criteria
In addition to the decision-making process, in which the procedure for a specific decision-making situation is determined, the decision is mainly determined by the requirements that are individually geared to the intended use. These are defined as criteria (relevant characteristics for the description of a software system) and, weighted according to their importance and, if necessary, combined into groups of criteria, form the basis for the evaluation/decision.
When selecting software – as an essential part of software procurement – for a business environment, the following requirements/criteria can be used, for example:
Functional requirements:
- Functionality supported by the software (incl. level of detail)
- Data that the software can manage/process: objects and their relationships to each other, attributes and their characteristics
- Interactive editing features of the software
- Evaluations offered by the software
IT requirements:
- Ability to integrate into the existing IT landscape: e.g. Internet-enabled, possible operating systems, DBMS, etc.
- Performance/IT Load
- Ease of installation and configuration
Architectural requirements:
- Usability/Ergonomics/Help System
- Security: Ensuring controlled access, management of rights, four-eyes principle, …
- Multi-client capability, multilingualism
- Versioning capabilities and historical view of the data
- Interfaces to and from other software packages and system software
- Flexibility, individual adaptability, e.g. via a parameter system
- Possibility to create additional, individual evaluations
Other criteria:
- Costs (e.g. by means of a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis)
- Manufacturer (awareness, reliability)
- Distribution of the software
- Lifecycle of the software solution
- Manufacturer’s rollout support
- Support: Update frequency, response time in case of software errors
As part of a software selection, the creation of a software requirements catalog is recommended. This bundles all essential requirements such as functional, non-functional and technical requirements and serves as a basis for establishing comparability between the various software providers.
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