How to find suitable open source software?
First place in finding OSS is the mediator platform sourceforge.net. There you will find more than several hundred thousand OS projects. The main challenge is to find the desired software from this large number of projects. For example: a search for the keyword “erp” will lead to an unmanageable number of search results. Actually just a small fraction of the results are fully operational ERP systems.
Cases @ OSS Central can assist you in researching open source software. Cases @ OSS Central provides a list of products classified by application category. Thereby you can identify the solution to be considered by yourself at a glance. Additionally you could figure out which company applies these products and in which industry branch this organization is operating.
However the search for suitable products is not the sole challenge in this context. For example it is not sure that the term ERP is interpreted by software vendors in the same way as your own understanding would suggest. To some, production planning is part of ERP. Others call a financial accounting software ERP system. Therefore a detailed matching of own requirements and functionality of chosen software is needed. To come to a decision you could proceed as follows:
- You define your goal, for example the implementation of an ERP system which accelerates the ordering process by 10%.
- You determine suitable software, for example by browsing products in detail which you find on Cases @ OSS Central.
- You evaluate products determined before approximately and apply an exclusion criterion to cut down the results on 3-5. Such a knock-out criterion could be for example a certain programming language used. If there are just a few products on the result list you do not need to apply any criterion for exclusion. The only purpose of this point is to reduce the effort of following steps.
- You establish a method to evaluate the remaining product alternatives. To do this you define assessment criteria in order to estimate the degree of probability that one product can achieve the objective. As a final result you should have prepared a criteria hierarchy with the initially defined goal on top subdividing itself into more and more precise sub-criteria. For example, one important point are the various expenses which can be classified as license fees, start-up costs, staff training costs and maintenance costs. Having defined the criteria hierarchy you need to add weighting factors to every criterion. The weights at the same level of hierarchy should sum up to 1. Every weighting factor represents the contribution of a certain criterion to take a decision. For example you could assume that the expenses have a weight of 0.7 and functionality is weighted with 0.3. That would mean an option with great expenses and good functionality is ranked inferior to a product with low costs and minor range of functions because costs play a more important role than functionality here and the higher the costs the worse the product is ranked.
- Afterwards you calculate the criteria values for every product option and adopt an evaluation method from decision theory or from the field of Operations Research. Such a technique could be for example a cost-benefit analysis or the Analytic Hierarchy Process. By applying one of the evaluation methods you are able to determine a total value. On the basis of that value it is possible to establish a ranking of suitable product alternatives. The option with the highest total value will (theoretically) satisfy your demands best.
Nevertheless, please pay attention to the fact that every evaluation method has its own characteristics. From past experience we know that it may happen that the software identified within the evaluation procedure is not the best fit.
While searching suitable software products it may be worthwhile to look beyond one’s own nose. Software products normally do not cover a closely defined range of functionality which is defined by its category. ERP systems may as well cover typical functions of BI or CRM systems. Depending on the requirement profile it could be worthwhile to consider such systems as well, also in view of product features needed in the future.
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