A demonstration shows you a system at its best, on clean data, with someone who knows it well driving. Your reality will be messier. The question worth asking is not whether the product can do the thing, but whether your team can do the thing with the product.
Questions that reveal more than a demo
- What does your support response look like at eleven at night? Ask for the contract clause, not the sales answer.
- How do we get our data out, in what format, and at what cost? Exit terms tell you how confident the vendor is.
- Who owns the customisations we pay for? If the answer is not 'we do', treat that spend as rent.
- What breaks first when we triple in volume? Every system has a first constraint. Knowing it prevents a surprise.
- Can we see the product roadmap, and what has slipped on it? A roadmap with no slippage is a marketing document.
Price the whole relationship, not the licence
Licence cost is the visible number. Implementation, integration, training, customisation, support uplift and the cost of your own team's time are usually larger and less discussed. We build a three-year total cost model before recommending anything, and it regularly changes the decision.
Insist on a pilot
Run the system on real data with real users for a defined period before committing. Vendors confident in their product will agree. The ones that will not have told you something important.
The cheapest licence in the evaluation is rarely the cheapest decision. It is just the easiest one to put in a budget line.
Written by
Daniel Okello
Chief Executive Officer, Oasis Hive Limited
