How to Choose Cost-Effective Software for Business Automation

Before making a final decision about starting using a particular automation platform it is crucial to perform a cost-effectiveness analysis. New software should lower costs and maximize the revenue of the business.
It is tough to build such a system in-house, however choosing the right one from multiple options from third-party vendors is not a piece of cake as well. There are numerous potential costs involved including the price of the product, its implementation/integration in current infrastructure, employees training, etc.
Today we will talk about what factors to consider while choosing automation software in order to reduce the potential cost of ownership (TCO).
Architecture and a tech stack
Overall quality of work of software is measured by the system’s architecture. This is where most problems of in-house programming are laying, however, such issues can be met when dealing with a software from the third-party vendor. Before rushing into migration to the new system or implementing new cloud service into current infrastructure it is a good idea to assess its architecture and tech stack.
Nowadays, the main values of any technology platform are:
· The flexibility that allows aligning technology with the changing business requirements.
· An opportunity to integrate software with third-party systems.
An example of such a platform is 1C:Enterprise. It is a framework incorporating multiple pre-set business objects and libraries, and a runtime environment with built-in integration features at the same time.
Data storage is also one of the most important aspects here. There should be documentation available on how data is stored in a new system, what kind of operations you can do with it, what databases does the system support. If there are few opportunities in working with data and the system does not support your preferred database type, it means that using this software may incur additional costs.
The technology stack is also very important. If the product is created using outdated technology (like, say, Perl), it is a bad sign. Ask yourself, how the team behind the product will find good developers for such outdated technologies in the future. It almost for sure will harm the development process and overall quality of the software. And bad software could be very costly to use.
Basically, tech stack should:
· Be flexible enough to easily modify the functionality of the product.
· Have a wide range of built-in integration tools.
· And an active and evolving community of supporters and developers as it is a perfect source of human resources.
Support and community
When dealing with systems that have big impact on business and its results, it is crucial to have an opportunity to solve problems quickly. This means good support is one of the main factors affecting the final choice of the software.
You can understand the quality level of the customer care by asking several questions. Whether there is a 24x7 support or not? Does the customer care team use a tracking system and are there any SLA and standards concerning reaction time in place? If there are little obligations taken by developers, they mostly for sure will fail to provide good support. This opens a room for potential losses: if your financial automation system is broken, it is a huge problem.
A vibrant community of users around a certain product is also nice to have. Tons of common questions are usually answered by members of such communities on dedicated forums or in social media. It is often faster to just google for the answer rather contacting support, as it saves time and resources. If there is no active community around software you are assessing, it is a huge drawback.
Real price
The last but not least thing to analyze is pricing itself! The total cost of ownership consists of multiple factors like licensing, implementation, support and upgrade. Also, there are tons of options for how software can be priced nowadays, and navigation through multiple billing plans might be confusing.
If you are about to use some free system, examine is it real or just a marketing: software might be free, however its updates or support very expensive. The same with paid tools: compare several products to find out the list of options you can get for a certain amount of money.

