Business Procedure or Enhancement

As with most software companies, we get many request for software enhancements when it seems the Point Of Sale (POS) software is missing some function, report, etc.

Prior to requesting an enhancement to a software package, it is always a good idea to go over your business procedure in detail to see if the procedure itself can be adjusted and because any time a software enhancement is requested, the change will require detailed information on the Who, What, When, Where and How it should work. Getting this information before hand by going over your procedures will better document it for your internal needs and get a jump start on clarifying the enhancement if it is still needed.

When documenting your business procedures, it is very common to leave out this you internally ‘just know’. These need to be documented as well for several reasons. The software company adding the enhancement may not know these ‘internal basics’; when new employees are trained, they may not know them and having it documented will speed training times; incomplete or unclear steps left leave it up to programmers to ‘guess’ what is needed to get to the next step, thus slowing the development process and delaying the changes.

It may sound overly detailed, but it is usually best to create documents with the complete novice in mind. Imagine trying to explain to a young child how to unlock a car. If you don’t tell them what a key hole is, there is no telling where they will try to put the key.