6 Questions to Ask Before Choosing Factory Software

Most businesses start their factory software search the same way: watch a demo, compare pricing tiers, check reference lists. None of that is wrong. But any comparison made before asking the right questions is misleading.

Asking the right question comes before finding the right software.

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Question 1: What Do We Actually Need — What Pain Are We Living With?

This is the most critical question. And the one most teams spend the least time on.

A factory software evaluation usually starts with one department: sometimes sales, sometimes the production manager, sometimes the CEO. But defining the need isn't one department's job. The sales team knows about the chaos in order tracking. The production manager complains about invisible capacity. Finance is frustrated by data arriving too late. All three complaints may share the same root cause — but voiced separately, they look like three different problems.

Things may look like they're flowing. Orders come in, production runs, deliveries happen. But operation durations never hold; reports lag; decisions get made on incomplete data. One emergency opens before the last one closes. Over time, the factory slips into a reactive rhythm — not a planning organization, but a firefighting one. Finding the source of this pattern requires the whole team at the table.

No software can do this step for you. When the root cause is correctly identified, the solution stops being one department's problem and becomes the whole company's mission — and that's where real change begins.

If you'd like support at this stage, we offer process consulting under our fab.engineering brand, within the Fabrika Yazılım group.

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Question 2: We Can See a Solution — But How Do We Decide on Resolution?

No company was built yesterday. Every factory has years of accumulated habits, workflows, and culture. Mapping the boundaries of that culture — understanding which changes will stress the system — is the first step in deciding on resolution.

So what is resolution?

How much detail do you want to track on a single plate or part? Are you currently tracking operation durations by the minute or by shift — and what do you want after the change? These questions define your resolution.

High granularity isn't wrong. But starting at maximum resolution in an area where no groundwork has been laid drives up both time and cost — and makes adoption harder for the team. Increasing resolution step by step, or staying at an optimal level, tends to produce more sustainable results.

In INFAB CLOUD, this resolution is entirely your decision. On the entry plan, you set it yourself. On higher plans, we make that decision with you and evolve it over time together.

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Question 3: We Know What We Need and Our Resolution — How Should We Think About Cost?

Here's a reality most factories look at backwards: the software license is the smallest line item in the total cost of the process.

The real cost is the operating cost of the process itself — meaning the labor cost of the people running it.

A concrete example: three engineers work in the quoting and order management function, producing 1,000 quotes per year. When you add up their total employer costs and divide by output, each quote carries an average labor cost of roughly 4,000–5,000 TL. Seen from that angle, a software license fee looks very different.

A 30% improvement in quoting speed reduces the per-quote cost by the same margin. More quotes, more orders — the benefit ripples outward. When you convert your technical workforce into measurable metrics, the return on process improvement and digitalization becomes measurable too.

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Question 4: Can We Get a Solution Built for Us?

There's a wide spectrum of options in the market. Off-the-shelf products, customized modules from large ERP platforms, fully bespoke builds. Each carries different budget, timeline, and team requirements.

The right question is: where do your answers to the first four questions point?

If your needs are clear and your scale is mid-size, configuring INFAB CLOUD specifically for your operation is entirely possible. If your processes require deeper customization, we can develop purpose-built process software under our fab.software brand. Where hardware and software need to be addressed together, fab.equipment can initiate an end-to-end development process.

We can walk the full path with you — from the first question to process delivery.

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Question 5: Can We Migrate Our Existing Data?

No factory starts from a blank page. Years of Excel files, old system backups, shop floor notes — all of it is the factory's memory.

There are three approaches to transitioning into INFAB CLOUD:

Parallel start: Keep your existing files as an archive and begin using INFAB CLOUD from today forward. When you need to reference older records, you have them; new work goes into the system.

Data migration: We clean and structure your existing data and integrate it into the system. You pick up where you left off.

Live integration: If you need your data pushed to other systems on a schedule, or synchronized with external tools while you work, we can design for that. INFAB CLOUD becomes part of your full process flow — not a standalone tool sitting beside it.

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Question 6: We Have No Defined Process Yet — Where Do We Start?

This looks like the hardest starting point. It is actually the cleanest one. There are no entrenched bad habits to unlearn. Everything can be built correctly from the beginning.

INFAB CLOUD doesn't force you into a process template. You start producing data through a simple interface: enter an order, open a work order, track an operation. The system is designed to move you forward — no prior expertise required.

After a while, you have real factory data in your hands. You can shape your processes by analyzing it yourself — or work with us to make sense of it together.

The absence of a process is not a barrier. In fact, this starting point — free of established wrong habits — is often where the fastest progress happens. From the very first day you begin generating data on the shop floor, you gain a clarity about your factory that you've never had before. That clarity makes decisions easier, reduces emergencies, and over time helps your factory develop its own operational language.

The best process is the one you start today.

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Where Do These Six Questions Lead?

From identifying needs to deciding resolution, from cost framing to data migration — all six questions point to the same center: choosing factory software is not a tool decision. It is a process decision.

The right tool emerges naturally once that decision is made.