You’re cast away on a deserted Island in the Pacific Ocean, away from the main shipping routes and isolated from other human kind. Perhaps you are a ‘Ben Fogle’ with the ability to survive in extreme conditions with nothing but a penknife for company.

You set up a windmill to lift fresh water from the lagoon to your hilltop hideaway and live on the abundant fruit that grows year round at various points on the Island.

Then one day you espy some flotsam drifting through the coral reef towards you, a wooden crate that is bobbing up and down in the drifting tide. There is a threat of sharks, but your curiosity and the protecting reef overcome your fear and you feel compelled to wade out and recover the first article from civilisation that you have seen for months.

Back on shore you see that the crate is firmly wrapped and it will take a great deal of ingenuity to open it. You chip away with a stone from the shore, but give up because you fear damaging whatever is inside. You have no bar to lever it open and your only tool is your trusty penknife. The crate is secured along the edges by metal straps, which seal and protect it and you weigh up the prospective advantage to you of investing effort in breaking in.

With time on your hands you might idly spend an hour or two on the problem, but if you are busy surviving you are more likely to put it t one side for another day, maybe using it as a table or desk in your hilltop hideaway. If you were to open the crate it is most likely that you would destroy it, so you have to weigh up the risk and would probably just leave it alone. It may be too big as a table and might not fit your hideaway, so that it is useless and not worth the effort you have expended in getting it. But most of all, you have no idea of the potential of the product inside!

That’s the way it is with most people who buy software.

It floats in, in a crate; carefully sealed so that no one other than the really determined can get in to see what is under the surface. If it’s right for you then you are lucky, and it becomes a . If it’s not what you expected, then at best it stays as an icon on your desktop, at worst its taken off your machine and left on the DVD rack.

How do you insure yourself against a software product that is not the right one for your Organisation?

1.Choose someone you can trust, and who will give you a straight and honest answer to your question.
2.Tell them what you want to do with the Software that you want to build or buy.
3.Give them some time to research the problem.
4.Listen to their opinion.
5.Ask questions.
6.Use your specialist to understand the potential of the product within.

It’s not surprising that the specialist you choose may not, at first, come up with a complete answer, since it is only as the picture is painted of the organisation they are dealing with that the detail can be understood and filled in.

Software packaging is cool, but it’s what it wraps that gives your business the edge.