At Fiftytwo, we have more than 25 years of experience as a sparring partner for our customers. Therefore, we have gathered valuable experiences in 5 important pieces of advice that give you the best conditions for choosing the right leasing system. The intention with this blog post is to be an inspiration for the phases you have to go through in the selection process.

1. Selecting the supplier

It is our experience that companies often choose a solution over a supplier and therefore do not do the necessary research of both aspects. However, many businesses experience annoying tracks after suppliers that should have been chosen from the same strict criteria as the system. It is important that the supplier has a certain size, both in relation to the number of employees who can vouch for the task, and in relation to finances to withstand in "all kinds of weather", so you can feel safe that a given supplier is also here after, for example, a financial crisis.

The size of the supplier also has a major impact on stability. Not only when it comes to operation and maintenance, but also development and delivery, all of which are disciplines that you as a customer continuously are dealing with to a greater or lesser extent. The size is only a benefit if they also focus on quality, and in addition there are many facets that can have an impact on future collaboration. The supplier must be able to attract and retain the necessary resources on several parameters, including competencies, experience and language, and optimally the supplier should be located in Denmark. These conditions all have an impact on delivery quality and delivery time.

The daily model for the collaboration is of great importance for the outcome itself, so that you both feel heard and understood and at the same time experience a goodwill to solve your common tasks together. As a customer, you and your needs should always be the main focus. The supplier must be aware that it is about efficiency and optimization at all levels and at the same time be able to deliver quality on time.

2. Compliance

In a time with several revelations of major irregularities in the control of cash flows in the financial sector, regulation is evolving rapidly both nationally and in the EU.

It has put compliance at the top of the agenda in most financial businesses, where the importance of systems that support increasing control and reporting has never been greater.

The biggest wave has undoubtedly been the introduction of the GDPR regulation, which has meant major reorganisations of existing routines, workflows and systems such as:

• Detailed and central control of user access with logging and traceability
• Securely clean up, delete and hand over data
• Encryption of stored data
• Educating employees in GDPR legislation and compliance
• Various requirements for obtaining information, checking information and checking data as required.

This presupposes a system architecture which is basically designed for the high demands in the individual functions in the leasing system, so that you as a user are supported to comply with laws and regulations and thus be compliant.

It is therefore crucial when choosing a leasing system that the solution complies with the requirements that exist today and has procedures and guarantees for continuously developing the system to meet new requirements and regulations. This not only has an impact on whether your company can live up to the many high demands, but also whether you can use as few resources as possible to always be compliant.

Last but not least, you should make sure that your supplier meets the highest standards through certifications and declarations such as a Data Protection Agreement (DPA) and Industrial Security Appliance 3000 (ISA3000) prepared by an external auditor.

3. IT security

All the data that are stored is of course important to secure, and in a leasing business there is an increased need to think security both in the leasing system you are considering to implement, but also in the IT infrastructure that the leasing system requires in the operating situation.

Is the leasing system based on widespread standards from reputable suppliers who can deliver a coherent and integrated architecture all the way from the underlying operating system over database to development and production environments, so that your company has control over all levels of the solution? Such a coherent architecture often also offers a central user management, which allows management of each individual user's profile in great detail in relation to all layers of the architecture. This gives the company a better opportunity to live up to even the strictest requirements for security around users and data.

It is also essential to find out whether the entire solution can be installed locally (on-premise), so that there is complete control over security, or whether all or parts of the solution must run in a cloud and therefore require special precautions to offer the same level of security. The functionality of a leasing system is often complemented by 3rd party products for eg collection of charges, payments, document management, credit information etc. Here it is important that the communication to and from these 3rd party products is secure and encrypted - especially for the 3rd party products that is conducted outside the company's internal environment, where others control security.

It is of course also a prerequisite that the supplier of the leasing system has chosen 3rd party products that live up to the same safety regulations that apply to the leasing system, e.g. with full integration incl. secure communication.

4. Operational stability

A good leasing system is only really good when it runs without problems. Therefore, it is essential to take a look at the operational stabilization and optimization options offered to the leasing system. This way, you can continuously improve the performance and execution speed of the system - both in the application itself, but also in infrastructure such as keys and indexes in the database and network, etc.

As with the security in the previous section, it starts with a stable platform for operation, where the constituent components such as operating system, database, clients, communication and integration should preferably be an integrated architecture that has proven its operational stability.

5. Deployment and operational support

With the right leasing system, on the right platform, in the right infrastructure, you now only have left to implement, train and operate. Also read "Lease Management - Which IT infrastructure should I choose?"

Here you can get great value from finding a supplier who has already established a well-defined implementation process under a standardized project model, so you can quickly put together a secure implementation project and get started.

In the roll-out method, there must also be room to assess any features that require customer-specific adjustments. In addition, these customer adaptations should preferably be carried out in a way that does not impede future updates of the standard systems and any third-party products.

It is of course interesting to find a supplier who sets up a customer team around your company, which selected super users can contact as needed - also onsite. However, it is at least as valuable to find a vendor that has online task reporting and management systems so that your company's superusers can report and document directly in the system. This means that your supplier can subsequently update the reported development and status tasks, so that you can follow the progress of the service cases online.

If your company has special support needs, for example outside normal office hours, or on special occasions, it is also a good idea to investigate the possibilities for extended support.

Conclusion

There are many factors to consider and it can be difficult to prioritize when it comes to choosing a leasing system. We have based the 5 good tips on the factors that, from experience, are not always included in the priority list of requirements. Requirements that can have a decisive influence on the success of a subsequent implementation and operational project.

Good luck in your selection process.

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