How to choose the best development tool?

Sommaire:

1. User experience
1.1 What for?
1.2 Asking for feedback

2. Specific employee needs
2.1 Employees
2.2 Managers
2.3 HUMAN RESOURCES

3. Know your product and supplier
3.1 Its vision
3.2 How it works

Before embarking on the purchase of a development tool, it is extremely important to ensure that it meets your expectations and those of your collaborators. This tool represents a considerable investment, both in terms of time and money. It will have a lasting impact on the way your company operates. For this reason, there are a number of things to look at before deciding whether the one presented to you is the ideal one.

1.User experience

1.1 Why?

Users will spend several hours a week, if not a day, on the platform of your choice. For this reason, having a clear and intuitive interface will enable quick purchases and reach a wide audience. So that users can familiarize themselves quickly, you also need to ensure that the language used is native to each user. This will avoid language errors and optimize comprehension.

1‍.2 Asking for opinions

The best way to choose the tool to implement in your company is to ask several people to use it and see if they understand how the platform works.  
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To understand this, don't hesitate to ask for feedback and comments from your employees by asking questions like these:
- Can you find your way around easily?
- Did you find what you were looking for easily?
- The more feedback you get, the better you'll know whether the solution before you is the right one for your business.

In fact, feedback is extremely important, as it enables us to have a collective opinion on a certain subject, thus enabling us to receive positive criticism and improve in certain areas.

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Image taken from the feedback module on the PALM platform:

If the tool is complex, it is of considerable importance that the supplier is present to provide educational support for the customer and his employees. This can be done through user guides, FAQs or even tutorial videos. These tools will help users to understand elements that may seem complicated, but are actually easier to handle than they think.

2. Specific employee needs

2.1 Employees

The aim of this tool is largely to make life easier for the employee and reduce the company TurnOver rate. To do this, we need to analyze employees' needs, and why they might not like working for your organization. We know from a Deloitte study that 70% of employees don't feel engaged enough. A high rate of disengagement means poor performance and, consequently, mediocre results. So, you need to make sure that the platform you choose offers different paths that will enable employee development in the short, and above all, the long term.

2.2 Manager

Another person to whom it's crucial to make things easier is the Manager, a key individual in the development of certain projects and therefore the company. The latter can sometimes find himself lost, with the multitudes of waves of information he or she has to organize and disseminate. So, among other benefits, the tool needs to be able to give a clear view of this data, so that more time can be dedicated to non-time-consuming tasks, such as encouraging employees to feel engaged.

2.3 HRD

The other important category of people you're looking to help with the tool's implementation is the HRD. Its role involves dozens of different tasks, all of which are repetitive, time-consuming, and could be automated. So, the tool needs to enable HRD to optimize the time spent on certain tasks. With the information from every Talent gathered and synthesized in one place, the decisions made about a certain individual's career development will be faster, more accurate and simply better.

Image taken from the 'People Review' module on the PALM platform:

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3.  Know your product and supplier

3.1 Getting to know the product

Before immersing yourself in a solution, make sure you're familiar with both the product and the supplier. There are several ways of doing this, such as asking for a demonstration (or 'demo'). This allows you to talk to one of the people in charge, to see whether the product meets your expectations, and whether its operation will provide a solution to the problems you've identified beforehand. A demo lasts an average of thirty minutes, and is the most important step in deciding whether a certain tool is the solution to your needs.

3.2 Getting to know the supplier

This demonstration will also give you an insight into the supplier's values and working methods, which will be reflected in the product and how it is maintained over time. Don't hesitate to bring along a list of questions that will help you get a good feel for the product in its entirety: - Are there any planned evolutions to the solution? - Which of your tools are the most advanced compared to the competition? - How long will the integration take? Maintaining a good relationship with the supplier is crucial in integrating the solution, since it will be tailored to your needs. The better the supplier gets to know you, the better they'll be able to respond to your requests

3.3 Ask for opinions

‍Another way to get to know the tool is to ask companies that use the software what they think of it (this information can be found on LinkedIn, for example). This provides honest, unbiased opinions on the tool's performance and usefulness.