Quote:
Originally Posted by Perry Winkle
Keep in mind that it doesn't matter how virtuous the system is you're inflicting on people if they won't cooperate. The users have to be on board or you're wasting your money. The users are your key to success. . . blah blah blah . .
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I agree with almost all of what you wrote. Before we even looked at a single product (officially--of course I had feelers out) we ran internal focus groups to talk about what was wrong with our current systems and what we needed to replace them. After a great deal of research I narrowed our options to three companies. Each company spent two days on site doing demos for our staff, along with other meetings etc. etc.
Product C was the universal third choice of everyone. Product A was the #1 choice of about 60% of the people, and was deemed "OK, we can work with that" by most of the others. Product B was twice as much as product A, so (duh) we went with A.
I could go on, but the only way we could have made this more participatory is if we had given each employee cash and told them to go buy their own databases. Like you said, some people whine no matter what, and you have to pull the trigger sometime.