Financial System Selection
Financial System Selection is made up of the nine key stages detailed below. Together they ensure that when the final choice is implemented it will perform as YOU expected it to when you contracted for it. FPM makes this possible by embedding a comprehensive set of procedures in each stage of the process. The result is that each step builds on the previous one and so reinforces the case in favour of the system finally chosen by you.
- 1 Project Initiation
- ensures that before the project starts the key elements of the Control Cycle are established and that their purpose is clearly understood by all involved. Each element is then kept up-to-date, to ensure the smooth progress of the project.
- 2 System Specification
- documents existing systems, along with their strengths, weaknesses and redundant areas. These are then used to identify internal systems that require a completely new approach, that are essential or that are desirable.
- 3 Supplier Request for Information
- combines the System Specification requirements of your organisation with a request for details about potential suppliers. These are issued to suitable suppliers and their responses are compared with the minimum requirements established in the System Specification phase. Those suppliers failing this test are de-selected from the process.
- 4 Supplier Demonstrations
- give you the opportunity to question face-to-face the ability of the short listed suppliers to satisfy your key requirements. Those suppliers which cannot meet your minimum requirements are removed from the process.
- 5 Site Visits
- allow you to meet several customers of the remaining suppliers and ask them a set of prepared questions about their system and how well it has operated. Of particular value are the comments made by the customer. These can be taken up with the supplier and may cause further suppliers to be de-selected from the process.
- 6 Conference Room Pilot
- condenses all the key areas identified so far into a set of tests. The suppliers left in the process are then asked to demonstrate that their system will cope with these tests. A preferred supplier is likely to emerge from this stage.
“FPM clearly & efficiently
identified the best Payroll
System to suit Emap”
Teresa Di Fenza
Group Payroll Manager
Emap PLC 
- 7 Supplier Due Diligence
- allows the preferred supplier to perform a gap analysis and so identify the extent to which the cost of the system will be increased by bespoke work.
- 8 Final Supplier Evaluation
- confirms that the preferred supplier will satisfy all of your needs.
- 9 Contractual Negotiation
- ensures that all the key areas you have identified are explicit in the contract and thereby the supplier is contractually bound by them at a pre-agreed price.
Once a system has been selected then the Financial System Implementation methodology can be applied.
