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Harley Davidson: Software Selection Process

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Harley Davidson Motor Company: Enterprise Software Selection (Case analysis)
Case description
“This case focuses on a change program and selection of an enterprise software vendor. The decision of which partner to choose to help the company change the way it purchased raised fundamental tensions within the company”.
Question 1
Consider Exhibit 10 on page 22 of the case; does it include the factors you consider most important in the selection process? Which factors would you be inclined to weight most heavily?
I think Harley Davidson did a very good job selecting the evaluation criteria. From the functional criteria, I consider Receiving, Supply Management and Project Tracking the most important functionalities. The others are mainly …show more content…

All companies provided a very satisfactory proposal in terms of functionality. All of them met our requirements by more than 90%. What will definitely act as a tie-breaker is the cultural binding that they might have with us. This is a crucial factor, because we are proposing a bold change and employees need to be accompanied and motivated. We have to make sure the provider knows our philosophy and culture. That will ensure that implementation, training and the change management go as smoothly as possible. No matter how good is the software in terms of functionality, if change and people are not managed carefully, the whole project risks failure. For that reason, our recommendation is provider 1. As top executives are often very sensitive to money issues, I would also stress the fact that provider 1 is the most cost effective option.
Question 4
What is your overall assessment of Harley’s approach to enterprise software selection? What (if anything) would you have done differently?
Overall, in my opinion, they had an excellent approach to the whole process. They took the time to do it right. They spend almost a year indoctrinating the strategy, creating enthusiasm and commitment around it, within the company. As for the software selection, they made sure that all departments or groups that would be subject to the change, made part of the process.
There’s, however, one

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