Here's help for fast-growing companies that need to buy a system they can rely on for years.

Michael Kerr needed software, and he needed it fast.

Soon after Kerr joined rapidly growing Boston Optical Fiber Inc. in January as chief financial officer, he discovered that the three-year-old company's management tools were incapable of effectively organizing the company's growing volume of data.

Consequently, executives of the Westborough, Mass., firm, which makes a new type of cable for high-speed computer networks, lacked the tools they needed to develop a business strategy relevant to the company's changing needs and business outlook.

In the back office, meanwhile, a bookkeeper struggled to keep up with payables and receivables using off-the-shelf spreadsheet software.

Kerr knew from experience as CFO at several start,up technology companies that the technical short-comings, which were becoming increasingly obvious, could mushroom into a financial nightmare if the company didn't put adequate software tools in place rapidly.

Yet he also knew he had to move deliberately, with an eye fixed on long-term needs, in selecting those tools.

He decided to focus first on the accounting system. He knew the company expects this year to quadruple its 1995 sales of plastic optical fiber used in cables. Sales last year totaled $1 million. He knew, therefore, that the company needed an accounting package capable of keeping up with increasing customer orders, billing, inventory, and international transactions.

Kerr also wanted the package to work on the company's computer network so that many departments, not just accounting, could enter and review relevant information.

Thus, he opted to evaluate higher-end accounting programs such as Accpac, from Computer Associates International, in Islandia, N.Y.; Great Plains Accounting, from Great Plains Software Inc., in Fargo, N.D.; and Solomon IV Accounting for Windows, from Solomon Software, in Findlay, Ohio.

Before signing a purchase order, Kerr did his homework. He read software reviews in computer magazines and looked at demonstration versions of each of the programs he considered to be finalists in the selection process. He decided on the Solomon package because it had the features he wanted and could be installed relatively quickly and easily.

For business-planning tasks, Kerr selected a modeling program he had used in a previous job, Cashe, from Business Matters Inc., in Waltham, Mass. Business modeling software enables owners to analyze their companies, make plans, and evaluate financial conditions.

"As a small business, we have to make evaluations quickly," Kerr says. "I don't have several months to look at the applications. To me, it comes down to what's in the content and how intuitive the product is."

Fast-growing companies such as Boston Optical Fiber have a common dilemma: They need to have software systems in place that can support their business operations reliably now and in the future, yet they often need to make software purchasing decisions quickly and without technical guidance.

To complicate matters, software technologies keep changing, making it hard for even technically oriented people like Kerr to keep up with developments.

"There are more choices than ever before, so it's hard to make the right decision," says David Vogel, who manages business-system advisory services in a three-state area for the accounting and consulting firm Coopers & Lybrand LLP in New York. "It's now easier to make the wrong decision."

It's all too easy for small-business owners to become utterly confused by the myriad new software offerings that seem to hit the stores with regularity--everything from new computer operating systems such as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95, to suites of software for basic office tasks such as word processing and spread-sheet work, to groupware for doing work collaboratively.

For large corporations, the job of soft. ware selection is relatively easy. Such companies often can afford to retain a big consulting firm, such as Andersen Consulting, Coopers & Lybrand, or Ernst & Young, to examine their business processes and advise them on the software they need.

That level of expertise is out of the price range of many small firms, however. They must rely on software manufacturers or on resellers, the local dealers who represent manufacturers. These companies know about software but may not know much about plugging any given product into a particular business. Entrepreneurs have to be smart shoppers who focus on filling specific business needs.

The siren call of the software industry is that companies need to have the latest, fastest software available. The most recent example of this was the release last year of Windows 95, which was widely advertised as making computing faster, easier, and, therefore, more productive.

Some corporate information-systems managers were skeptical, weighing their existing computer investments against the time and cost that would be necessary to upgrade hardware, software, and the network and to train employees to work with Windows 95. In contrast, many small-business owners, eager to get their hands on the latest technology, bought one or more copies of the new operating system as soon as it went on the market.