TEC helps major paint retailer simplify its software evaluation and selection using TEC methodology

Kelly-Moore Paints, the largest employee-owned paint company in the US, recently engaged the services of software evaluation firm Technology Evaluation Centres (TEC) to help it select an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to meet its growing needs.

With over 2,000 employees, three major manufacturing facilities, and 164 retail stores, Kelly-Moore Paints decided that it was time to move from multiple, disparate software systems to one integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. With a tight deadline of only 10 months to complete the project, from requirements-gathering to evaluation, selection, and implementation, Kelly-Moore was looking for help in navigating the complex software systems selection process.

While in the research phase, Kelly-Moore's project team learned about TEC, and discovered that TEC's decision support engine and methodology could help it better navigate the complex decision-making process. TEC offers support for software selection and implementation projects from business process modeling (detailed requirement-gathering) through the research evaluation and selection stage, concluding with the planning, implementation, and post-implementation activities.

Kelly-Moore began with TEC's request for information (RFI) templates for mixed-mode (process and discrete) ERP to identify feature and function gaps that might have otherwise been missed, and created a custom RFI specifically designed for its environment.

Starting out with approximately 20 vendors that fit their basic requirements, TEC's eBestMatch(TM) decision support engine and research portal allowed Kelly-Moore to compare multiple vendors simultaneously, eliminating those solutions that did not integrate with its existing financial platform, and reducing the number of shortlisted vendors from 20 to 2 in significantly less time than would have been possible using more traditional evaluation methods.

Carl Sweetland, chief information officer for Kelly-Moore Paints, explains "TEC saved us time and worry; it simplified the process for us greatly. We were able to focus on evaluating the shortlisted results while feeling secure about the methodology behind it because the findings could be demonstrated with our own customized reports and graphs."

About Technology Evaluation Centers Inc. (TEC)

Since 1993, Technology Evaluation Centers has been the world's leading online provider of resources to help organizations select software solutions best suited to their particular business models and special requirements. TEC currently maintains over 20 software evaluation resource centers containing specialized software evaluation tools, as well as thousands of detailed criteria on over 800 software solutions, ranging from enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM), to business intelligence (BI) and enterprise asset management (EAM).