Successful Software Research For Second Son Consulting
17/07/12 09:21 Filed in: News
I’m very happy to have completed a software research project for Second Son Consulting.
is one of the consultants that I hired during my time as I.T. Manager for The Icon. Based on our work together Rob has asked me to help him with several projects - most recently, a software research project.
Rob Calvert, the lead consultant and owner of Second Son
is one of the consultants that I hired during my time as I.T. Manager for The Icon. Based on our work together Rob has asked me to help him with several projects - most recently, a software research project.
I’m very happy to have completed a software research project for Second Son Consulting.
is one of the consultants that I hired during my time as I.T. Manager for The Icon. Based on our work together Rob has asked me to help him with several projects - most recently, a software research project.
I was tasked with helping a moderately sized Social Services agency find case management software to help them better track their progress. (sorry, they have to remain unnamed for now). I was able to interview many of the staff members as part of my information gathering and got a great overview of the business and institutional needs of the organization.
Next, off to research the possibilities. After looking into about a dozen packages - mostly S.A.A.S. solutions - I narrowed down to 4 candidates that fit their needs and their budget. Initially, I did demos with the vendors and then worked with the key players to demo the software for the client.
They finally decided on Apricot by Community Tech Knowledge - they’ve moved into deployment and I’m off to my next project.
while working on this was that the range of capabilities amongst different vendors working in niche markets (in this case, social work case management software) is a lot greater than with consumer or general business software and that the best companies can be hard to find because they don’t always have the best marketing. I had to look for a lot of word-of-mouth referrals, relying on contacts within my client organization to reach out for suggestions. The other great resource I found was trade conferences where I was able to connect with some of the vendors who were doing marketing directly to the segment (but which were hard to find online through keyword searching). Sometimes, you just have to inhabit the space that your client lives in to find the best resources.
Rob Calvert, the lead consultant and owner of Second Son
is one of the consultants that I hired during my time as I.T. Manager for The Icon. Based on our work together Rob has asked me to help him with several projects - most recently, a software research project.
I was tasked with helping a moderately sized Social Services agency find case management software to help them better track their progress. (sorry, they have to remain unnamed for now). I was able to interview many of the staff members as part of my information gathering and got a great overview of the business and institutional needs of the organization.
Next, off to research the possibilities. After looking into about a dozen packages - mostly S.A.A.S. solutions - I narrowed down to 4 candidates that fit their needs and their budget. Initially, I did demos with the vendors and then worked with the key players to demo the software for the client.
They finally decided on Apricot by Community Tech Knowledge - they’ve moved into deployment and I’m off to my next project.
The biggest lesson I learned:
while working on this was that the range of capabilities amongst different vendors working in niche markets (in this case, social work case management software) is a lot greater than with consumer or general business software and that the best companies can be hard to find because they don’t always have the best marketing. I had to look for a lot of word-of-mouth referrals, relying on contacts within my client organization to reach out for suggestions. The other great resource I found was trade conferences where I was able to connect with some of the vendors who were doing marketing directly to the segment (but which were hard to find online through keyword searching). Sometimes, you just have to inhabit the space that your client lives in to find the best resources.