Avoid Buyer's Remorse by Choosing the Right Automation Solution

According to a recent Gartner survey, a whopping 60% of software buyers regret a purchase they’ve made in the last 12 to 18 months. For modern organizations, the sensation of buyer’s remorse can leave more than just a bad taste in your teams’ mouths—it can also cause unexpected costs, onboarding difficulties, and implementation failure.  

Given the rise of automation throughout many back-office departments, it’s no surprise that ensuring that your business has the right vendor and solution from the start is of the utmost importance.  

In this blog, we’ll examine why buyer’s remorse is so common and what steps your organization can take to choose the right automation solution from the beginning, avoiding wasting time and money in the long run. 

What’s Causing Buyer’s Remorse? 

While every business’s software shopping experience varies, when it comes to realizing they’ve picked an ill-fitting solution, there are a few common issues that bring on buyer’s remorse. 

These include: 

• Higher-than-expected cost of ownership or subscription fees 

• Slow or difficult implementation 

• A lack of scale and growth capabilities 

• Problematic or complicated handoff between sales and implementation 

• Mismanaged expectations 

• Using one team or department (IT, Marketing, Sales, Finance, etc.) to choose a software 

Regardless of the cause or causes, the unfortunate result is that the business is now stuck with a solution that doesn’t sufficiently solve for their needs. 

4 Tips to Make the Right Choice, the First Time 

If you’re in the market for a new solution or currently experiencing buyer’s remorse and looking for ways to avoid that on your next purchase—we've got you covered. Here are 4 tried and true steps you can take to ensure a satisfactory solution for your business.  

1) Don’t leave it all up to one department. 

The team most commonly tapped to evaluate a potential new solution is IT. While they’re chosen for their technical knowledge, their perspective can be limited by their position within your business. The true ideal software evaluation team is a mix of end users. This varied blend helps to ensure the current and future states of individual team members are taken into account before a selection is made. Now your business can be more certain that you’re finding a solution that checks important operational boxes across the board, avoiding buyer’s remorse before it can occur. 

2) Evaluate the total cost of ownership.  

 An appealing subscription cost is just a fraction of the true total cost of ownership. The full financial investment involves the initial license fee, implementation services, customizations, training, maintenance, and other add-ons. And that’s just the current cost to your business—as you continue to grow, some vendors will charge again for future feature enhancements or out-of-the-box requests. In fact, 34% of organizations blame their buyer’s remorse on a higher-than-expected investment. A great way to establish a more accurate ROI for any solution you’re considering is creating and solidifying a list of “must-haves” and then measuring potential vendors against them.  

3) Enter every demo prepared with questions about the solution.  

It turns out that the old adage “preparation is the key to success” is true—especially when it comes to choosing new software. Product demos are great tools to gain first-hand experience with the technology your business is considering—and there can never be too many of them. Before each demo, your evaluation team should be prepared with a checklist of features that are absolutely necessary versus those that are just nice to have. Asking questions on important topics like:  

• What differentiates your product from its competitors? 

• What does the implementation process look like? 

• Can your product scale and grow with my business? 

• What are its fraud prevention and other security capabilities? 

• How will this solution impact my current workflows? 

• Are there any common friction areas for other users? 

Once you have the answers to these questions, you’ll have a deeper understanding of whether or not this solution is a good fit for your business. 

4) Seek out a variety of reviews, not just the most recent ones.  

 While happy customer reviews for software solutions are a plus, it’s no secret that they are often carefully selected and cultivated by the vendors themselves. For a more unbiased look at how a potential new solution is actually performing for users, check out review sites, request customer references, and connect with peers in your ERP community. Their first-hand feedback can provide your business with a cohesive picture of what the software can—or can’t--provide.  

Why Choosing the Right Automation Solution is Important 

We get it: buyer’s remorse can be painful. With the previously mentioned tips in mind, your business may be able to avoid that ordeal altogether and get started with the right solution more quickly. 

When it comes to implementing automation into your business processes, there are a number of ways the right solution will be a transformative one from the get-go. This includes things like:  

• Eliminating manual processes, which drives down the risk of human error and gives your staff more time back for strategic initiatives 

• Enhanced fraud and security protections driven by the automated collection, management, and storage of key data 

• Less money spent on paper-based processes, on-premise hardware storage and maintenance, and other costly back-office items 

At DocuPhase, our suite of automation solutions has been designed to take your business’s efficiency to the next level—no buyer’s remorse required. Schedule a demo with one of our automation experts today to learn more!