13 Pitfalls to Avoid When Acquiring an Order Management System

Selecting and implementing a new order management system can be a daunting process. After all, this is a mission-critical suite of applications that can make or break your business. There are dozens of potential solutions and never enough time — or so it seems — to attend to all the details.

There’s also the issue of technophobia. And sorting out the real from the hype in your technology options is unquestionably a tough challenge, even if you’re trying to keep up with the changes in this fast-paced field.

Often the best way to achieve a successful outcome is to learn from the mistakes of others. Following are 13 pitfalls to avoid when shopping for and installing a new order management system.

1. Fighting the last war. When searching for a new system, don’t focus on just the things your current system can’t do. If you turn this project into finding “not X,” you’ll miss the opportunity to take a great leap forward with the new system.

Of course, you can go overboard and get inordinately ambitious. If you decide to re-engineer every business process in your company while also installing a new order management system, you likely will introduce too much change too rapidly to your organization. It’s a shock from which you might not recover.

Only you can tell how much change your company can take. Changes that make current methods more efficient will be easier to digest than changes that introduce entirely new business methods.

A safer type of change focuses on what you can do for your customers, rather than operational changes, per se. The ability to implement a loyalty program, provide more robust product information in the contact center and on your Web site, offer installment billing, or manage promotional campaigns more efficiently are good types of change. Have your team brainstorm its wish list in these areas to get you on the right track.

2. Having no plan. If you’re not in the habit of making lists, you’re going to be in trouble when acquiring a new system. Failure to have a plan for this project’s implementation is a common and deadly mistake.

Such a plan needn’t be elaborate. A mere list of goals, objectives, priorities and decisions (made and to be made) will suffice. After all, this is a “forest and trees” situation. You’ve got to get and keep perspective. There will be a lot of variables to manage.

A good example here is addressing the role of your e-commerce platform in this whole process. Should your new system work in conjunction with that platform? Should it replace it? Do you intend to replace it separately from your new order management system? Are you prepared to make that kind of decision now?

In truth, you may not be. But if there are legacy applications you intend to keep (e.g., marketing, e-commerce, inventory management, supply chain management), you must be clear about how these will fit in the new big picture.

You also should be clear as to why you want to keep these legacy systems in place and how willing you are to replace them, based on factors of cost or functionality. In other words, be prepared to treat your entire plan as a moving target.

3. Not including all departments. Bringing in a new order management system is going to have an impact on all parts of your organization — so include them in the process. Ask for input on what they’d like a new system to enable them to do. Have department heads aggregate these into a coherent, prioritized list of requirements.

4. Having no team. This absolutely is a team project. If any one person tries to wing it, the chances of failure increase dramatically.

Who should be on the team? You need representatives from each key department in the business: marketing, merchandising, e-commerce, order entry and customer service, purchasing, inventory management, fulfillment, circulation, accounting, and even maybe catalog design.

You also don’t want to treat your team like a committee. People are used to attending meetings, and if they aren’t zoned out altogether, at best they perceive the meeting to be like a committee. A team is different. A team has a goal and is responsible for developing effective strategies to reach that goal. Give your team responsibility as well as authority and accountability. Light its fire, and keep it focused on the task at hand.

5. Having no sponsor. An individual at the highest executive level has to be fully on board with the whole process. He or she needs to be kept apprised of its progress and must be able to make those course-correcting decisions at the inevitable forks in the road. From time to time, the leader also will have to put the team back on track.

6. Having no timeline. This is a doozy. How long should this entire process take? There are no hard and fast rules, but there never seems to be enough time, either. In general, it can take three to six months to prepare for your systems-selection process, another three or four months to select a system, and from six to 12 months to implement it.

That’s 12 months minimum, and nearly two years on the outside. Yet few companies allow that kind of time in their systems-acquisition process. Typically, you should spend two months in prep, two months in selection and two months in implementation. And even these are very aggressive goals — and practically assure that you’ll be cutting corners. Yet it can be done. But if that’s your situation, you’re all the more bound by your timeline.

Have your team devise the most realistic timeline; then stick to it. Letting the project slip is the most common mistake catalogers make.

7. Scope creep. One of the reasons these projects fail — and why the timeline slips — is that they take on a life of their own. Decisions made about legacy applications, for example, get reconsidered (for good reasons), but now you may be trying to do twice as much work in the same amount of time. Or, more commonly, you select a system and suddenly want all kinds of additional functions modified or customized, either because you hadn’t thought about them before or because you hadn’t focused clearly enough up front on what you really want the system to do. Or maybe things have changed since the project started.

8. Wanting a beauty contest. Companies start looking around at systems as if they were judging a beauty pageant. Listen, software vendors are pros when it comes to demos. They can put lipstick on the grungiest of pigs and make it look like a winner.

To avoid the demo trap, your team must develop a comprehensive list of what it expects the system to do. Ask vendors to show you how they’d do those things. Focus on you and your needs, not on the vendor and its functionality. It’s OK to be selfish. You’re the one who will be signing the check!

9. Wanting too much engineering. Yes, focus first, last and always on what you want the system to do. But don’t overdo your wish list. At the end of the day, you’re looking for a packaged solution. You’ll have to compromise between what you want and what the systems offer. The more you know about what you need, the easier it’ll be to make informed compromises.

10. Not doing true due diligence. Partnering with a vendor is a lot like getting married. However, you’re not marrying just a person but an entire “family” of vendor managers, vendor programmers and other users. Every family is a bit dysfunctional (read: no system is perfect). Can you live with this family’s particular issues?

11. Not leaving enough time for testing. I’ve already discussed the timeline, but this deserves a special mention. If your timeline has slipped, implementation is where you’re going to cut the biggest corners. Don’t do it! What good is implementing a broken system?

Virtually every system has to go through a shakeout period in which you ascertain how your data are going to work in the new environment. There will be some nasty surprises, and hopefully they easily can be fixed. But be sure those surprises occur during your carefully managed testing phase, not during the first few months after you’ve gone live.

Also, resist the temptation to run your new system in tandem with your old one. (That’s a story for another time.) Rather, test, test and test some more; then cut over cleanly to your new system when it’s ready to bear the load.

12. Not doing enough training. When the testing is done, let the training begin. What? No time for training?

If you think your staff can undergo “sink or swim” training, be prepared for a lot of drowning. A week or two of solid orientation, careful instruction and practice is crucial to making the implementation a success.

13. Not treating this as an evolving process. Finally — and this may be the most difficult to avoid — you can’t pull all this off in a bubble. Life goes on while you’re undertaking your system project. By the time you get the system running, chances are your company will be different from what it was when the project began. The week after you go live, you’ll see the system in a new light anyway.

In short, installing an order management solution is like having a child: It changes everything. And it takes on a life of its own. The bottom line: You, your team, your system and your vendor partner must be able to evolve and grow together. Good luck!

Ernie Schell is author of “The Guide to Catalog Management Software.” He’s also president of Marketing Systems Analysis in Southampton, Pa., which helps catalog companies specify and select order processing software. Reach him at (215) 396-0660.