OK. You sent an information sheet to the vendors on your list and you have received responses. Now what?

Review the responses and set aside the tools that do not meet your most important criteria. Make a smaller list of the tools that do most of what you want. Note that it will be difficult to find a tool that does 100% of what you want AND is a good fit, but you should be able to find a tool that does most of what you need.



The question is what do we do now? There are various lines of thought on this. Some people think you should schedule a demonstration with the vendor, others think you should evaluate a trial site, others think you should go through a pilot.

I am a fan of going through a demonstration with the vendor AND setting up your own trial site for your own hands on evaluation. Why? Because there is value to be gained with both methods.

A demonstration reveals several things you may not learn otherwise:
1. It reveals functions of the software you didn't know were there.
2. It reveals new ways of accomplishing your objectives that you didn't think about.
3. It provides interaction with the vendor revealing more about how the vendor operates.
4. It reveals how important your business process is to the vendor. Do they give you a "canned" approach, or do they make an attempt at showing how to meet your particular objectives and process with their tool?

A trial site also reveals things:
1. It reveals how intuitive the software is to someone that has not had a lot of formal training.
2. It allows you to see first-hand how you can really setup your process in the system.
3. It allows you to get feedback from others in the organization.

My recommendation is to schedule a demonstration with each of the final vendors, and then evaluate your own trial site.

Let me go into some more detail on how to work through a demo...