It's pretty tough to do business in a single location nowadays. Tough if you want to be cost-competitive. Tough if you want to take advantage of emerging markets. And tough if you need to focus on your core competencies or do business with major retailers or global enterprises. Let's face it: this is a tough business all around. But communicating with a global customer and supplier base does not have to be tough if you take advantage of the right technology.

Picking technology can be tricky—tedious, complex, time-consuming—and perhaps even downright boring. But it is strategic, and choosing the wrong platform can destroy a company's ability to compete in the fast-paced global economy. That is why the old way of picking out software—looking at every possible function in several similar systems—doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. Instead, there are a few simple ideas that your IT strategy absolutely needs to incorporate.

First, look for software that works the way people actually work—meaning that it is roles-based. Ask if the vendor can point to user-based research to support the claim that the software is roles-based. If it can, select a few key individuals on your team and have them try to complete a few hours of work in the proposed system. Using the new software should feel natural—as if the people who wrote it actually understood the nuances of the job.

Also, software needs to fit with your existing systems and enable users to access information quickly from their familiar desktop applications. Familiarity makes it easier for people to learn and use the business software, and cuts down on the cost of training and implementations. And if the interface is one that people already use much of the time, it cuts down on resistance to change and noncompliance, which helps companies reap the value of their investment faster.

Next, ensure that the applications include contextual business intelligence—the ability to show a user the state of the business processes they care about in real time. They should not have to go to a data warehouse or a separate inquiry function. Some systems alert users to problems almost constantly, such as with e-mail.

Systems should be flexible enough to allow users to present the data in any way they choose, on the fly, and allow "drill downs" to source information. This approach enables informed, confident decision-making, without impractical delays to search for supporting data.

The technology should also provide collaboration and communication tools. Ideally, the business application would be seamlessly integrated with a common desktop application. This enables users to respond instantly to changing information and new alerts using the application in which they already spend the bulk of their time.

To facilitate the need for global collaboration, an application such as Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services allows ordinary users to effortlessly set up a security-enhanced Web site that can be accessed by customers, partners and remote team members to facilitate project planning, product design, forecasting or other key communications globally. It allows access to both structured and unstructured data—structured data from your underlying business applications and unstructured data such as design drawings and sketches, or commonly used document types such as those created by Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

As well, software needs to be adaptable to change as business changes. It is very difficult for companies today to compete on product features; it is a short-term advantage at best. Companies today realize they need to compete on excellent business processes—and that bar gets higher every day. As an example, not so long ago taking orders by fax was considered to be very new and an example of a best practice business process. Today, Internet orders and self-service are the standard, and fax is rarely mentioned. The only thing we can predict about best practices for future businesses is that they will be different than those in use today. Your software needs to evolve quickly and effortlessly to allow you to compete globally.