Selecting the right leave management system is critical for your company, but how do you go about doing that? There are steps your company can take that are useful for selecting any type of software and will help ensure you end up getting the right leave management system to meet your needs. This article will provide you with the steps to take and questions to ask in order to cover all the bases, assuming your company does not have the in-house technical expertise or resources to build your own solution from scratch.

Finding the Right Leave Management System: Setting the Stage

The most important step to take in starting the software selection process is to define your needs, and that means both present and future needs. The more specific you can be about this, the better. Define what your current needs are in the here and now within the context of your company’s business goals. Then take a look at whether you think your company is going to grow in the near future. If significant growth is on the horizon, you’ll want to select software that can scale up as needed if growth happens. Be realistic about this part of the process – it would be a waste of resources for a small business to buy into an enterprise solution meant for large companies. But if you’re on the cusp of transitioning from a small business to a medium-sized business and actively growing, then it might be wise to consider a solution geared towards that next level for your company.

With those big-picture considerations outlined, then it’s time to analyze your company’s needs at the more granular level of the specific business processes that will be impacted by the leave management system. In this case, take a thorough look at how employee leave is currently managed and identify all the parts of the process that are working well along with all the aspects that need improvement. This will help ensure that your company doesn’t inadvertently select software that has negative impacts on processes that are already going well but instead supports them while improving or correcting the areas that need it. It’s also a good idea to divide your list of needs into “must-haves” versus “nice-to-haves” so you have additional flexibility in your search.

After defining your needs as specifically as possible, you can then assemble a list of all the software options that fit your needs assessment. By filtering out all the software options that are clearly don’t fit your needs, you’ll end up with a list that is much more manageable than trying to evaluate all of them. But make sure your list is as complete as possible so you don’t miss a solution that might be the right one for you company.

Questions to Ask About Leave Management System Options

With your list of potential leave management system software options in hand, it’s time to start examining each one with a set of questions that will let you further winnow down the options. Use the following questions to accomplish this part of the process:

• Will the software meet all your most important needs?
• Will the software meet any of your less important needs?
• Is the software as user-friendly as you want or need it to be?
• Will it be easy to implement the solution?
• Does the software allow the level of customizability you desire?
• Will the software require you to change some business processes in a way that makes sense?
• Does the vendor have other customers or testimonials from companies like yours?
• Relative to its competitors, does the solution appear to be innovative?
• Is the pricing within an acceptable range?

Additional Steps in Selecting a Leave Management System

After you’ve gone through your list of software options and asked those questions, the list ought to be much smaller. Once you have this short-list of leave management system options, take these additional steps to help you decide:

• Ask your peers in other companies for their recommendations.
• Contact each vendor about their offering and pay attention to the quality of your interactions with them.
• Sign up for a free trial if it’s available so end users can try the solution and provide feedback. Otherwise, you’ll have to settle for a software demonstration (but again, get end-user input).
• Ask the vendor for references and speak to them, just like you would when making a hire.

Following a process like the one outlined above when selecting a leave management system for your company will go a long way towards making sure you end up with a solution that will meet your needs. With literally hundreds of options out there, taking a step-by-step approach will allow you to quickly narrow your search down to short-list of viable options. Check out CaptureLeave as one simple but powerful solution great for small and medium-sized businesses. Sign up for a free 60-day trial to see how it can work for your company!