Developing business requirements

The business requirements ultimately define the requirements of the new system. This stage of the selection process also entitles everyone to have their say in what the new system should or should not be able to deliver, and can get out of hand.

Managing the participants to ensure there is buy in, and business needs are clearly identified along with avoiding any departmental politics or a free-for-all allowing everyone in the business to state their wishlist is a key part of managing the business requirments process.

There is also the danger that the business requirements become a wishlist or ultimately allow the new system to be seen as a silver bullet to solve all organisational issues, and ultimately raise expectations impossible to deliver on.

In less complex organizations it is sometimes important to understand potential system capabilities alongside business requirements to ensure this situation does not occur. This is known as "bounded visioning".

System selection online provides the methodology and all the tools required to equip you for this process, including interview and workshop guides, agenda templates and business requirements guides, frameworks and templates, to give you a head start. Working off a template is far easier than developing from scratch.

One size does unfortunately not fit all, each organisation is different but the framework is generally the same, allowing us to develop suitable templates to support the process.

Documenting business requirements in a clear and logical manner will set the foundations for the rest of the ERP or similar, system selection project. It is also the time to ensure old manual ineficient processes are eliminated to make way for new, technology enabled processes, to improve the organisation.