Expert: Scottgem - 2/15/2006

Question
my company wanna buy new procurement management information system, so i choose procurement software packages. but i need to know what are the advantages and different between on-the-shelf and tailor-made software? hope you can help me clearly this things.. yeah i know the price&cost is the big difference.. other then that? i wanna know more about the system working for our company.. the way the system help our staff..  

Answer
The main difference between off the shelf and tailor-made is that, with tailor-made you supply the exact specifications and get exactly the feature and functionality you want. Depending on the size of your business this could also mean a much greater cost factor.

What you should be doing is contacting vendors of such software and getting proposals from them. Again depending on the scope, you can possibly get salesman in to demo their products and show you what they can do. Then you can decide whether an off the shelf package will do the job for you.

HTH
Scott<>