We have all bought commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products such as the Microsoft Office Suite and can be guilty for not liking that annoying paper clip "assistant". It's a simple decision to buy MS Office, but what if you want a full supply chain management system. You want it to link up to your suppliers' and clients' payment systems, and your accounting system. What the heck, why not link it to the human resource system as well? After sorting out your system requirements you need to make the decision of buying a COTS product or a customised system made especially to meet your needs. This newsletter will help you with that decision.

Your decision depends on your needs and how specialised you want your system to be. You would have to do some research to find out if there are any available COTS products that meets your general needs. A COTS product can be an option that requires as much deliberate planning, study, modification, testing, and change management as a development project, not to mention the licensing and contracting costs involved. There you were thinking it was as easy as buying a product and getting your IT department, or yourself, to install it. Take a look at Carnegie Mellon's COTS-Based Systems Lessons to get an idea of the scope of adopting COTS products.

Developing your own system is a favourable option, as some of our clients have discovered, when a COTS product ends up costing you more money, effort, and time. When you have a system specifically developed for your needs you have control over its functions, capabilities, code, future development and maintenance. Your development team can overcome program bugs and develop further features to the system at your very whim, without them having to place these changes on their priority list.

Creating a system from scratch will still require you to perform a business case and feasibility study. You want to know if your system will have any business worth and if you can afford to proceed with the system development. Figure out what you want your system to do. Then gather quotes from COTS product vendors and system development firms. Remember to weigh up the initial costs and ongoing maintenance or licensing costs as well as future customisation and maintenance issues when deciding on which quote to follow up. Feel free to give me a call or an email at fred@freestylemedia.com.au if you would like some advice or to discuss any system development opportunities.