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Tag: Enterprise solutions

HubSpot CRM: Automation and AI for Smarter Business Growth
In 2026, choosing a CRM is no longer just about storing contacts, deals, and tickets. Companies need a platform that reduces manual work, connects teams, and helps users act faster. This is where HubSpot stands out.

Compared with many CRM and marketing automation tools that require heavy customization or disconnected add-ons, HubSpot brings marketing, sales, service, content, operations, automation, and AI into one customer platform. Its recent Spring 2026 Spotlight reinforced this direction, with updates focused on awareness, revenue growth, customer support, and AI-powered productivity.

For companies in Portugal, this is especially relevant. As a HubSpot partner in Portugal, Sollogica helps businesses implement, integrate, and optimize HubSpot so teams can spend less time on repetitive work and more time on growth.

1. Breeze: HubSpot’s AI layer for everyday productivity

One of HubSpot’s biggest advantages is Breeze, its AI layer across the platform. Breeze includes AI assistants and agents that help teams create content, summarize information, answer questions, and automate tasks inside HubSpot.

The key benefit is context. Instead of using a separate AI tool with no connection to your CRM, Breeze works with HubSpot data, customer records, workflows, and business context. This helps users move faster without switching between tools.

For marketing, sales, and service teams, that means fewer repetitive tasks, less manual research, and faster execution.

2. HubSpot AEO: helping brands stay visible in AI search

Search behavior is changing. Buyers are increasingly using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to research solutions. HubSpot AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization, helps companies understand how they appear in AI-generated answers and provides recommendations to improve visibility.

This gives HubSpot an important advantage for marketing teams. Traditional SEO remains important, but HubSpot now helps businesses prepare for a world where customers ask AI engines for product, service, and vendor recommendations.

For companies that already use HubSpot for content, CRM, and campaigns, AEO adds another layer of visibility without requiring a completely separate marketing stack.

3. Breeze Assistant for Loop Marketing

HubSpot’s Breeze Assistant also supports Loop Marketing, HubSpot’s AI-era marketing framework. It helps marketers define ideal customer profiles, build brand guides, and create campaign briefs using real customer context.

This reduces the time spent on campaign planning and brief creation. Instead of starting from a blank page, teams can use HubSpot data to build more relevant campaigns faster.

For companies managing multiple audiences, languages, or markets, this can make marketing operations more consistent and easier to scale.

4. Prospecting Agent: less manual sales research

Sales teams often spend too much time researching companies, looking for buying signals, identifying contacts, and preparing outreach. HubSpot’s Prospecting Agent helps automate that work by identifying opportunities, prioritizing accounts, finding contacts, and drafting personalized outreach for sales reps to review.

This is where HubSpot becomes more than a database. It helps sales teams decide who to contact, when to act, and how to personalize the approach.

The result is a lower administrative workload and more time for actual selling.

5. Smart Deal Progression: cleaner pipelines with less effort

CRM data is only useful when it is updated. But in many sales teams, deal stages, notes, next steps, and close dates are often incomplete because reps are busy selling.

HubSpot’s Smart Deal Progression helps solve this by analyzing sales interactions and deal history to suggest CRM updates, draft follow-up emails, and surface action items.

For users, this reduces manual CRM maintenance. For managers, it improves pipeline visibility. For leadership, it supports more accurate forecasting.

This is one of the strongest examples of HubSpot’s automation advantage: the platform does not just record activity; it helps turn activity into action.

6. Customer Agent: automated support with customer context

HubSpot’s Customer Agent helps service teams automate routine customer support. It can use help documentation, CRM data, and conversation history to answer customer questions and hand off to human agents when needed.

This reduces the workload on support teams while helping customers get faster answers. Instead of assigning every simple question to a human agent, HubSpot can handle repetitive requests and keep service teams focused on more complex cases.

For growing companies, this is a practical way to scale customer support without immediately increasing headcount.

7. Campaign automation inside HubSpot workflows

HubSpot has also improved campaign automation. Campaign properties and campaign events can now be used in workflows, helping teams automate actions based on campaign-level data. For example, marketing teams can trigger alerts, follow-up actions, or internal notifications when campaign activity reaches a specific condition.

This makes campaign management more operationally efficient. Instead of manually checking performance, notifying sales, or coordinating follow-up, teams can build automated processes inside HubSpot.

The advantage is not only time savings. It also improves consistency between marketing and sales, because campaign activity can automatically trigger the right next step.

8. Smart CRM index: faster access to the data that matters

HubSpot’s redesigned Smart CRM index gives users a more efficient way to manage contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and custom objects. It includes collapsible filters, inline report views, and Breeze AI column insights, helping teams work with CRM data without constantly moving between screens.

This matters because CRM adoption depends on usability. If users can find records, analyze data, and update properties faster, the CRM becomes part of daily work instead of another administrative burden.

For teams comparing HubSpot with competing platforms, this ease of use is a major differentiator.

9. AI connectors / MCP: connecting HubSpot to the wider tech stack

HubSpot is also extending AI beyond its own interface. Through MCP and AI connectors, HubSpot can connect CRM context with other tools and AI clients, helping teams access and use HubSpot data in more flexible ways. HubSpot has highlighted MCP-related updates as part of its broader AI and platform evolution.

This is important for companies with complex systems. HubSpot can act as the central customer platform while still connecting with other business tools.

The result is a more integrated technology stack and fewer disconnected processes.

What this means for businesses

HubSpot’s biggest advantage is not one isolated feature. It is the combination of CRM, automation, AI, data, reporting, marketing, sales, and service in one platform.

For businesses, this means:
- Less manual data entry.
- Faster campaign planning.
- More efficient lead follow-up.
- Cleaner sales pipelines.
- Better support automation.
- Stronger alignment between marketing, sales, and service.
- More time for teams to focus on strategic work.
In a competitive CRM market, HubSpot stands out because it helps users reduce workload while keeping customer data, automation, and AI connected.

Why work with Sollogica as your HubSpot partner in Portugal

HubSpot’s newest AI and automation features are powerful, but they need to be configured around your business model. A generic setup will not deliver the same results as a structured implementation that reflects your sales process, customer journey, data model, service operations, and reporting needs.

That is where Sollogica can support companies. As a HubSpot partner, Sollogica helps organizations implement HubSpot, migrate CRM data, integrate systems through custom APIs, configure programmable automation, align sales and marketing, implement help desk processes, and build knowledge bases that can support both human teams and AI agents.

For Portuguese companies, working with a local HubSpot partner also makes adoption easier. Teams can receive support in Portuguese and English, align the platform with local business realities, and build automation’s that match the way their organization actually operates.

Conclusion: HubSpot reduces workload by turning CRM data into action

The future of CRM is not just about managing customer information. It is about reducing the manual work required to use that information.

HubSpot is moving strongly in that direction. With Breeze, AI agents, Smart Deal Progression, Customer Agent, campaign automation, HubSpot AEO, and the Smart CRM index, the platform helps teams automate repetitive tasks, improve decisions, and act faster.

For companies in Portugal, this creates a clear opportunity: use HubSpot not only as a CRM, but as an automation-driven growth platform. With Sollogica as a HubSpot partner in Portugal, businesses can configure HubSpot around their real processes, reduce operational workload, and give their teams more time to focus on customers, revenue, and growth.

If you wish to find out more about these topics, reach us through the available channels, or schedule a meeting at your availability.
28.05.2026
Sollogica: The trusted HubSpot partner in Portugal

In the fast-paced world of business and marketing, staying ahead of the curve is essential. For companies in Portugal, there’s one name that stands out as the go-to HubSpot partner. With a reputation for excellence and a commitment to helping businesses thrive, Sollogica has become the trusted partner for HubSpot in Portugal.

Unlocking the Power of HubSpot

HubSpot, a leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform, has revolutionized the way businesses manage their marketing, sales, and customer support. As a HubSpot partner, Sollogica brings this powerful solution to Portugal, enabling local and global businesses to harness the full potential of HubSpot capabilities.

All-in-One Integration

One of the standout advantages of HubSpot is its ability to seamlessly integrate marketing, sales, and support functions into a single, unified platform. This all-in-one solution streamlines operations and ensures that your team can work cohesively towards common goals. With Sollogica as your partner, you can harness the full potential of HubSpot’s CRM capabilities, allowing you to nurture leads, manage customer relationships, and provide top-notch support, all from one central hub.

Effortless Productivity

Time is money in the world of business, and HubSpot understands this better than anyone. With one-click integrations with popular productivity tools, HubSpot ensures that your team can work efficiently and effortlessly. Sollogica, as your HubSpot partner, will help you leverage these integrations to boost productivity and reduce the time spent on manual data entry tasks. Whether it’s connecting your email, calendar, or other essential tools, HubSpot makes it simple.

Affordable Entry Tier

HubSpot believes that powerful CRM solutions should be accessible to businesses of all sizes. That’s why they offer an inexpensive entry tier that provides access to many of HubSpot’s core features. Sollogica can help you navigate HubSpot’s pricing structure, ensuring that you get the best value for your investment. Whether you’re a small startup or an established enterprise.

Unlocking Automation

Automation is the key to saving time and resources in today’s competitive landscape. HubSpot’s automation capabilities are second to none, and Sollogica can help you harness these features to their fullest extent. Say goodbye to time consuming data entry tasks, and let HubSpot handle the heavy lifting. From lead nurturing to follow-up emails, HubSpot’s automation features free up your team’s valuable time so they can focus on what really matters — growing your business.

In conclusion, Sollogica stands as the premier HubSpot partner in Portugal, bringing the power of HubSpot’s CRM solutions to businesses of all sizes. With its all-in-one integration, seamless productivity tools, affordable entry tier, and automation capabilities, HubSpot is the ideal choice for businesses looking to thrive in the digital age.

Partnering with Sollogica ensures that your business can make the most of HubSpot’s CRM platform, unlocking new levels of efficiency and success. Don’t miss out on the advantages of HubSpot – partner with Sollogica today and take your business to new heights.

12.04.2023
Another satisfied customer!

“It was a pleasure!” These were the words of Torre Fashion Group CEO, during the formal delivery of the multi-channel support solution developed by Sollogica.

Torre S.A. is a reference at European level in men’s ceremonial and formal clothing, with recognized tradition and experience in the sector, standing out for its strong commitment to national design, planning and production. With the goal of improving customer service processes, Torre invited Sollogica to present a proposal in order to satisfy the presented requirements.

With the dedication and commitment that characterizes us, Sollogica’s proposal, based on the Hubspot and Aircall platforms, stood out from the competition, and through the centralization of customer information, process standardization, production of analytical information and support channels improvements, quickly turned into a successful project. In the words of Gonçalo Soares, CEO of Torre SA:

“The partnership established with Sollogica… was a highly positive process at all levels: Technical, Collaborative, and above all in the Implementation component…

At the technical level, we found in Sollogica the partner that provided us with a clearer picture of the path we wanted and needed, making it possible to analyze the several possibilities in an uncompromising way with the final solution. There is a permanent concern of adapting the solution to the customer’s needs, in a uninterested way, something that reinforced the context of trust that was established from the beginning.

I speak of the Collaborative Capacity, for the positive and creative approach to the problems / situations that were successively presented, and which was always able to respond to. Balanced solutions were found for the challenges presented. Creative solutions and always with the economic angle in mind.

Finally, in terms of Implementation, there’s nothing better than saying that the objectives we set ourselves at the start of the project were successfully met and all the project’s Stakeholders, including myself, were satisfied.”

On our part, we can thank all the dedication and commitment Torre team provided throughout the several stages of the project, as this close collaboration was one of the key elements for its success.

02.06.2022
Sollogica partnership with Aircall

We are pleased to announce Sollogica partnership with Aircall, a cloud-based provider of voice solutions with an innovative and competitive offering in the areas of call center and voice platforms.

In an area historically dominated by complex solutions, with dependencies between hardware and suppliers, “un-agile” CTI integrations and high management, implementation and maintenance costs, Aircall provides a practical and innovative offer that removes the complexity of combining suppliers, telephone exchanges and management software, through an easy and complete service at very competitive costs.

Where you need to be

The phone app is located on your computer or mobile phone as needed. Connected to the respective user account, it allows to receive or perform calls anywhere via PC or mobile phone, being the ideal solution for sales and support services working in-office or remotely.

No complex implementations

Removes implementation and integration efforts between operators, hardware infrastructures and business management systems, through a software as a service solution with an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.

Easily connectable

With dozens of prebuilt integrations with the main management systems and custom integration capabilities via API, it connects with your relevant systems in order to effectively manage voice channels in sales, support or other relevant business areas.

Real time information and analytics

Provides real-time monitoring and detailed analytical capabilities, allowing to analyze teams performance or check all the voice traffic performed in a quick and user-friendly interface.

Competitive

With a transparent subscription model, it ensures your business voice solutions at very competitive costs compared with the current market offering.

For Sollogica it’s a pleasure to be an ally in Portugal to such innovative products, that clearly generate added value for our customers. Aircall is a safe choice in the area of voice communications, with an offering that far exceeds expectations compared to the traditional solutions available in this area.

If you need more information about these subjects or wish to schedule a solution demo, reach us through the available channels.

05.05.2022
Customer Experience Management
After detailing the foundations of this subject in the article customer relationship management, in this article we will look into customer experience management, and how this evolution translates into a new level of knowledge about the business and it’s customers, in order to translate this knowledge into added value for organizations.

What is customer experience management

The general definition of customer experience management, known by the acronyms CEM ou CXM, is the collection of processes that an organization uses to organize, track and follow all interactions between a customer and the business throughout the customer lifecycle. These collections of processes, in turn, aim to achieve or exceed customer expectations, in order to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

What is the importance of customer experience management

In a competitive global market, where the consumers have an increasing ability to choose between products and services, organizations need to innovate to stand out from the competition. One of the currently most popular ways to stand out, is through the optimization of all contact points between the business and the customer, ensuring an optimal experience from the first contact to its conclusion.

This optimal experience is not only intended to build customer loyalty, but also to transform the customer into an advocate for the product, brand or service, influencing in a positive way people or entities around them.

What steps to implement a CXM strategy

Just like it’s predecessor, CXM is not a technological solution or a category of softwares, but a business strategy that consists on a set of processes, based on qualified and standardized customer data, activated by information technologies, therefore the steps to be taken for a successful implementation involve defining the strategy, aligning it with business processes and subsequently identifying the technologies that will ensure the acquisition and qualification of key information.

Above all, the strategy foundations must be based on the added value intended for the organization’s processes.

Strategic framework

Excellence yes, but excellence in what sense? Easier, faster, better looking, better? The characteristics of an optimal customer experience will vary depending on the customer’s expectations, together with the specifics of each product, service or business area, so the first question to consider is: “given the characteristics of the business, what is the direction that best meets customer expectations and strategy objectives”.

In addition to defining a path, one of the crucial goals of this stage is to avoid a “better in every way” approach, something that, in addition to being utopian, will certainly be fruitless given its overly generic scope.

Customer Journeys

The second step to take involves the mapping of all customer journeys, which means identifying all interaction points between a customer and your business throughout the customer lifecycle.

What are the entry points into your business? What actions are taken from consideration to purchase? And what steps are made after closing the deal?

Every action involving customer interaction must be identified, monitored and optimized, in order to provide an experience that stands out in a positive way, enhancing the loyalty and promotion of your business through your customers and improving the business profitability in return.

This step will allow to identify which business processes are involved in the different customer journeys and where/how they interact with the journeys, which allow to to transition into the technological aspects of the strategy.

Technological framework

With the strategy and mappings ensured, it’s now possible to identify the technological solutions that allow to complement the previous points, in order to monitor and optimize the different stages of the customer journey.

As mentioned before, there’s not a “one size fits all” solution, since the business characteristics in conjunction with customer’s expectations and the chosen strategy will define which solutions are a best fit.

In a general way, the technological approach must cover the following areas, at the core of the customer facing processes:
- The promotion of the business, brand and / or products on the defined channels
- Content Marketing and digital channels management
- Communication automation at the several levels of the business lifecycle
- Monitoring and optimization of commercial activities such as events, outbound calling or 1-to-1 meetings
- Customer service management
- And finally as an aggregation point of all previous bullets, customer data management and KPI generation
Hopefully this article will provide a succinct but detailed look at customer experience management and the main steps for its implementation. As always, If you have any questions or want more information about these subjects, reach us through the available channels.
02.12.2021
Customer Relationship Management

A popular and efficient strategy throughout the years, customer relationship management is a step towards knowing better your potential or existing customers, through a set of processes and technological solutions, implemented mainly in the areas that directly interact with the customer, such as marketing, sales, and support.

Currently this concept has evolved a new level called Customer Experience Management, which deepens the originally defined concepts to obtain an even more detailed level of knowledge of your customer and business, through the creation of “Customer Journeys” for example. However, to achieve this level of detail, it’s first necessary to understand and implement the foundations that stem from the original concept of customer relationship management.

The foundations

Understanding customer relationship management

CRM is not a tool or software, but a business strategy that integrates internal processes and external networks to generate added value for potential or existing customers. It is based on qualified and standardized customer data, activated by information technologies, hence its natural association with technological solutions and the category of software called with this acronym.

However, it’s crucial to understand that achieving results through customer relationship management is not only ensured by technology, but through a business strategy that combines both processes and technology to achieve it’s goals.

Understanding CRM types

There are three strands of CRM that we list below:

Strategic

Customer-oriented business strategy from where the term customer-centric comes from, that aims to gain and retain profitable customers by generating increased value in relation to its competitors.

Operacional

Centered on automating processes in areas that interact directly with the customer, such as Marketing, Sales or Support, however it can also impact processes in other areas.

Analitical

Is the process by which the organization transforms customer and process data into relevant information that improves it’s performance, supporting decision making and process evaluation.

The combination of these three strands allows the definition in the strategic part, the implementation in the operational part, where the various types of CRM solutions fit to implement the defined processes, such as Marketing automation, sales force automation and service automation, and in the analytical aspect, the evaluation, through solutions that mold base systems information to produce performance indicators, forecast models and other analytical information.

Centralization and integration of information

One of the important steps towards a “customer-centric mindset” is the centralization of customer information, in order to provide a complete vision, consolidating all processes and interactions with the various areas of the organization. This holistic view of the customer is crucial to identify the customer’s evolution, their background in the organization and above all to provide a positive customer experience.

In this centralization process, the integration of information across the organization’s several systems plays an important role, in order to eliminate information silos that isolate and fragment relevant information.

Business processes

As mentioned before, customer relationship management is a business strategy, so the implementation of its customer-facing processes is one of the key aspects of the strategy.

Campaign management in the case of Marketing, management of leads, contacts and opportunities in Sales, or service level management in the case of Service automation, are examples of processes that should be implemented and periodically revised according to the desired level of optimization.

The way to monitor process performance will be carried out through the technological solutions implemented for this purpose, whether at operational level, in the case of CRM solutions, marketing automation, or support automation, or through analytical solutions that generate key performance indicators and other relevant aggregated data.

Automation

Whether through the implementation of information systems, or through the optimization of these same systems to reduce the effort in “data-entry” tasks, automation plays a preponderant role in the optimization of business processes.

The solutions at operational level, such as the aforementioned CRM, marketing automation, or support automation solutions, must ensure that information is integrated, secure, and accessible to the organization’s relevant resources, while ensuring the performance of business processes.

These systems must also ensure a low effort in data insertion and updates, minimizing the impact that the strategy has on the organization resources. I’ve already written an article on this subject for CRM, that you can consult here.

Information integrity

Another critical success factor of a CRM strategy is the quality and integrity of the information collected, since performance indicators are the main method to evaluate the success of implemented strategies, and these cannot be obtained through erroneous or missing information .

Duplicates, redundancies or incorrect data are enemies of a successful CRM strategy, given its crucial importance in assessing the effectiveness of implemented processes, which is why this risk must be mitigated right in the design of the operational systems.

Automation also has a preponderant role in this area, through the implementation of validation mechanisms and information complements, however one of the most relevant measures to mitigate this risk is in the solutions design phase, anticipating this issue through the type of fields used as well as the validation mechanisms they will have.

Although this strategy has been known and adopted globally for many years, I hope this article will allow the reader to identify the foundations of CRM, guiding a successful implementation and identifying the most common problems. These foundations are equally important to evolve this concept to its most current versions, such as customer experience management, a topic that I’ll reserve for a next article.

As always, If you have any questions or want more information about these subjects, contact us through the available channels.

08.09.2021
How to implement software solutions

This is the second part of a series aimed at covering the process of selecting and implementing business software solutions, where this article finishes the selection process and covers the “How to implement software solutions” part, from the customer’s perspective.

In the last article the selection process was not completed, because the final step is related to implementation aspects that we’re now detailing. Solutions of this dimension require a relevant level of configuration and customization to ensure alignment with business requirements, therefore, how the solution will be implemented, what project methodology will be used, the level of business involvement, and of course the project effort, represent important factors in the choice process.

At this stage, the functional and business requirements are already identified, the solution is also identified and the selected partners have submitted proposals, therefore is possible to determine the cost and evaluate the proposals.

“But isn’t the implementation independent of the solution choice? “

Depends on several factors.

As mentioned in the previous article, the choice of the implementation partner is as important as the choice of the solution, due to the complexity and scope of the enterprise software solutions. The absence of a qualified implementation partner, inability to respond to key requirements or excessive costs are factors that can define the choice between two competing software solutions.

Other possibilities to resolve limitations at partner level should not be ruled out, however given the purpose of this article it’s important to highlight the impact of the implementing partner on the project’s financial effort, on the quality of the final solution, as well as on the project’s ROI.

Proposal evaluation

In addition to the most prevalent criteria, such as compliance with requirements, effort and cost, there are other relevant criteria that allow to evaluate the received proposals in greater detail. We’ve highlighted the most relevant ones below:

Level of financial detail

What is the cost of the base solution, the cost of the initial implementation, annual corrective maintenance effort, license renewals, training, involvement of internal resources. This level of detail is important to ensure that TCO estimations are not defrauded.

Level of planning detail

As already mentioned in the first article, overly simplistic proposals often follow a commercial approach, and will almost certainly need revisions throughout the project. Ensure the implementation plan covers all key aspects with a proper level of detail.

Level of project complexity

It may happen that some requirements significantly increase the effort of the project, therefore it’s important to understand from the provided requirements, which ones are easy and difficult to accomplish. A common approach when requesting proposals is asking to identify per requirement, which ones are guaranteed natively by the tool, achieved through customization and if customized what is the level of complexity.

Knowledge management

If you have important business processes reflected in the new software, it becomes necessary to retain knowledge on the implemented solution. This retention of knowledge must be ensured by the partner through contracted maintenance services or by formal knowledge transmission.

These and several other criteria are difficult to determine if you don’t have the proper knowledge within your organization. If this is the case, it’s recommended to acquire consultancy services from a partner like Sollogica, to assist in the process of selecting and implementing the software, mitigating knowledge risks and providing the necessary expertise to move towards the intended objective.

Solution Implementation

After the selection is made, we then proceed to the implementation process, which despite being under the responsibility of the entity hired for the purpose, must be carefully monitored by the client.

As the internal requirements assessment phase, resources should be allocated to ensure project monitoring, requirements clarification, operational processes detailing, user experience and other necessary aspects before the acceptance phase. The team constitution must be carried out by defining the necessary roles to be involved, followed by the allocation of resources to each role.

Within the profiles identified there will always be a project sponsor, typically linked to the top management, with the aim of monitoring the overall progress of the implementation, which leads us to the implementation methodology.

Project Management

In terms of project management our preference and advice always goes to methodologies based on Agile principles, where Scrum is the most popular but there are others like Kanban.

Not all projects can be implemented this way, due to project size, specific characteristics of the business area or implementation requirements, however, of all the Agile principles, we highlight two that we consider fundamental to the process of developing and implementing solutions, regardless methodology:

Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software

This is one of the principles that we consider most important in any implementation, given the greater ease in managing expectations and moving towards the proposed goals.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development

Assume that despite the clients work, there are imponderables that increase according to the size and complexity of the project, therefore the ability to make adjustments without compromising the project should be ensured.

Even if the implementing partner uses another project management approach, at least these two principles should be ensured to properly follow the implementation work, and to provide the ability to react to changes in the project scope. Having mentioned this, our recommendation will always be in the use of Agile methodologies.

Change Management

This is one of the most important aspects for the implementation success, since it’s natural to have some resistance to the solution adoption. This resistance will vary depending on the solution scope and areas, the business culture or the level of digital maturity of the organization, however the lack of adoption is a high risk that must be managed.

To mitigate this risk we highlight the following measures:

Identify and transmit benefits of change to all affected areas. This transmission can even be done hands-on through preliminary accesses, ensuring that everyone involved can perceive the change benefits.

Leadership must give the example, assuming the change, getting involved in the process and monitoring the adoption over time to avoid setbacks.

Key users are not just proactive resources, but should be ambassadors for change within their colleague circles.

Group culture can generate censorship if an individual who understands the benefits of change is surrounded by non-receptive colleagues. All of the organization networks must be involved to avoid rejection.

Acceptance and Go-Live

After the acceptance tests, the go-live can be scheduled according to the defined approach, and while taking advantage of the new features and benefits, the next initiatives can be pursued.

If there are questions about this article, or you require additional information contact us through the available channels.

10.03.2021
How to choose the best software solution?
This article is part of a series aimed to cover the process of selecting and implementing business software solutions and as the title says, this first article is focused on: How to choose the best software solution for my business?

Enterprise software solutions have the ability to dramatically improve the performance of a business, ensuring greater control and perception of operations in order to produce added value for users, management and customers. However, given the effort and impact on the business, if this process is not properly planned it can result in significant losses.

And if there’s one thing in common throughout the years I’ve provided business solutions, it’s that no two implementations are the same. The organizational context, human context, business area specifics, the technological context of the organization, the level of maturity of the business processes, are all factors that contribute to the level of specificity of the project.

Given that these specifics produce a certain level of risk at financial, effort and change levels, from the moment you start assessing an enterprise software solution, it’s necessary to identify which functional and business requirements must be considered, as well as who should be responsible for identifying and validating the requirements, in order to mitigate the process risk.

What are enterprise software solutions

Enterprise solutions are large-scale software systems, capable of centralizing and managing the assigned business areas processes. These systems provide a level of automation, monitoring and information collection that allows to reduce operational costs, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, while producing performance indicators in real time.

The types of enterprise software solutions and their relevance will vary depending on the size of the organization or business areas, however here are some examples:
- Marketing automation platforms
- Customer Relationship Managment, or “CRM”
- Enterprise Resource Planning, or “ERP”
- Supply Chain Management systems
- Human Resource Management, or “HRM”
- Enterprise Asset Management, or “EAM”
- Business Intelligence systems
Who should be involved

To identify who should be involved in the requirements gathering process, it’s necessary to define the key roles to perform the project tasks.

Typically the necessary resources fall into the following roles:

Sponsors

Profile of the main heads of the organization, the project sponsors must provide the vision and the direction to follow, ensuring the alignment of all involved.

Deciders

Management profile usually associated with the impacted processes, such as those responsible for production or finance in the case of an ERP, or the sales person in the case of a CRM.

SME’s

Or Subject Matter Experts, are the specialized resources in the target processes, responsible for the collection, evaluation and elaboration of the requirements.

Support and collaboration

Other stakeholders, resources of related areas that have relevant information, and operational support.

Business Requirements

Business requirements are the elements that the business needs to ensure its operation, such as business processes, business rules or tasks. The distinction to functional requirements relies on the fact that business requirements represent something that the business needs for its operation, without being directly related to what’s intended from the software solution.

Business processes are for example, employee onboarding, opportunity management or product development. In case of a business rule we have for example, how to determine the discount given to a customer or the criteria for expense approval.

At this stage, it’s highly important to ensure that all stakeholders are involved in the process, in order to ensure the complete and detailed identification of all business needs.

A good practice after identifying business requirements is to categorize and define degrees of importance for them. In this way it’s possible to make adjustments more easily, or to evaluate the proposals received with greater precision.

Functional Requirements

Functional requirements are the functionalities that the system must perform, from the user’s perspective, in order to suppress identified needs, such as: “When registering a new support request, the system must notify the support team by email, as well as the manager of the person who made the request”.

In this stage, all the desired functionalities must be identified, so it’s important to ensure that all relevant stakeholders are involved. In addition, some resources assigned to this stage must have the necessary background to validate the requirements and assess their feasibility.

On this stage the general characteristics of the tool start to be identified, such as Cloud or On-Premise, multi-language, multi-currency capabilities, extensibility of the tool, export and integration capabilities and overall user experience.

Cost

Financial effort will always be a decisive criteria in choosing the right solution, given the solutions broad scope and the potential longevity of the implementation process.

In order to anticipate the financial effort for the investment, the main indicator to consider is the Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO. This KPI identifies all costs associated with the implementation and availability of the solution, including product acquisition or licensing, customization and configuration, corrective and evolutionary maintenance.

The importance of this indicator comes from the fact that, in solutions of this dimension, the effort of customization and maintenance of the tool can become superior to the acquisition or licensing of the product. On the other hand, it’s a common practice to attract the customer through a low initial investment and overly simplistic implementation models, revealing the real cost and complexity only when the customer is already deep inside the project and it’s too late to go back, therefore estimating the TCO as soon as possible in the project is a way to avoid unforeseen costs that can lead to complications.

One of the relevant points in estimating the TCO is the correct identification of business requirements. The way the organization intends to reflect its business processes in the new solution can cause radical variations in the effort and cost of the project, therefore the identification and application of the requirements is a key part in the TCO estimation.

Common misconceptions

After describing some key steps in this process, it’s also relevant to demystify some ideas and issues that often occur during enterprise software implementations.

No Out-of-the-box solution does what you need

Out-of-the-box or OOB is the way to describe the solution as just acquired, and there are no configurations or customization’s made. Due to the broad scope of this type of solutions as well as the diversity and complexity of different processes and business areas, the software will hardly be ready when you receive it.

Even in an extreme approach of aligning business processes to the way they are reflected in the base solution, something that I do not recommend any business to do, there will always be a need to configure the solution.

Na aquisição de soluções empresariais de grande dimensão, deve sempre assegurar um parceiro de implementação que possua o expertise necessário para implementar os requisitos identificados, garantindo que a ferramenta irá atingir os When purchasing large business solutions, you must always ensure an implementation partner that has the necessary expertise to implement the identified requirements, ensuring that the tool will achieve the proposed objectives.

If you don’t know in detail what the solution needs to do, then the solution can become part of the problem

The pun is intended, because unfortunately, the incorrect or missing identification of business requirements is something that occurs with some frequency. It is also one of the main reasons for implementation costs to start escalating, either through additional effort on the project to suppress information needs or through evolutionary maintenance to correct something that should have been done right from the start.

Properly identified business processes are a premise for successful implementation.

Process and technology need to be aligned

Even with well-identified requirements, situations almost always emerge where the solution cannot fully answer one or other requirement, or else the effort to fulfill them is exaggerated, or else some solution fulfills the most important requirements as no other can, but has some limitations in another area.

Ensuring an exact match in everything the business needs will always be a daunting exercise, so the safest way to approach the subject is to be able to perceive, in each alignment case between processes and technology, which side can be aligned more easily. This is a basic case of the importance in having knowledge and experience on your side, which leads to the next topic.

Choosing the implementation partner is just as important as choosing the tool

Due to the complexity and scope of business software solutions, one of the key aspects to ensure is the choice of the implementation partner. In addition to the common choice criteria such as experience and cost, the implementation partner must ensure the alignment between technology and business, extracting the maximum potential from the solution in a transparent, integrated and effective way.

Sollogica fulfills these requirements with distinction, having the expertise to intervene in requirements gathering or solution implementation stages, ensuring the success of the proposed initiatives.

Process Steps

After reviewing the main topics of the subject, it’s possible to summarize the first steps of the selection process:

1. Define project team

Assign a team to the process, identifying the target resources for the defined profiles.

2. Identify business and functional requirements

It emerges from the inventory and mapping of business processes, as well as the requirements analysis.

3. Formalize requirements

Through specifications, RFP or other desired model, in order to present to selected partners for proposal development.

4. Make a shortlist of solution and implementation partners

Shorten the options depending on the requirements and other criteria identified. Several solution manufacturers delegate configuration and customization to partners, so at this stage you should also identify which partners fit you best considering the identified solutions.

5. Identify TCO

With the partners proposals you should already have the main elements to identify the total cost of ownership, which will provide you to fully understand the financial effort over time.

The following steps for effective product and partner selection depend on additional factors regarding the implementation process, which will be covered in the second part of this series: How to implement enterprise software solutions.

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24.02.2021