Discussion

By Martin Bailey on Jan 20, 2021

Thanks Jennifer, this is true for all software, not limited to web-to-print or job tracking. The most useful thing a customer can do is to describe exactly what they are trying to achieve, what they’ve tried and what happened when they did … and then answer the additional questions that the vendor will ask as clearly and concisely as possible. Do that and the support team and developers will love you. They may be able to tell you how to use some other existing feature of the product to achieve what you want. And if they can’t they’re much more likely to add or tweak a feature for you, because they can figure out precisely what they need to do!

By Chris Lynn on Jan 22, 2021

Jennifer, I suspect that few printers adopt a formal user requirements specification process when selecting software - is this your experience?
I'm talking about identifying and documenting high-level 'epics' and user 'stories' (e.g. "as a CSR, I need the new system to display job numbers and specs sorted by due date..."), with a priority assigned to each of them by, for example, the MoSCoW method. (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have.)
This kind of formality avoids some of the problems you are describing, and forces the buyer - as Martin implies - to specify in detail WHAT they want to achieve and not HOW it should be achieved.