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Software Provider Checklist Ask the right questions to vet your next software.

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Uptime

When you’re relying on a business to run, it has the biggest impact

on your ROI. Uptime comes down to overall business performance

based upon the cost of downtime. Cost of downtime can run

between thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Can you provide your uptime for the last 6 months?

What is your average global uptime?

Scalability

You need the ability to build in a single tenant or multiple tenants to

the size needed to ensure software usability without performance

impact.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

What type of architecture is the platform based upon?

Does the software have capacity limits?

Can we scale up and down without having to interact or reach

out?

Redundancy

You need multi-location infrastructure (separate regional

locations), automatic failovers that aren’t dependent upon

physical changes to hardware and automated monitoring to

ensure the provider’s technical resources are instantly notified when there are impacts to performance.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

What type of failover system do you have in place?

Is manual work available in case of emergency?

Are there regionally located redundancies?

How often are failover systems tested?

What are testing mechanisms for disaster recovery?

(In other words, are failovers forced on individual

modules or environments to test automations?)

SLA

Many tech companies don’t give you SLAs around impact or cost to

business, but give SLAs on percentage of licensing. This can hide overall

quality of agreement.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

What is your SLA?

What is your compensation for below SLA performance?

What is your SLA compensation based upon? (i.e. licensing?

Invoice?)

Pricing

When choosing a software provider, evaluate several

options to establish a pricing baseline. To find the best technology that fits within your budget and toolset requirements, learn the industry’s value system in

determining price to understand what you are paying

for. A lot of companies don’t know to give proper

valuation to a cost.

What should you be asking?

5

QUESTIONS TO ASK

What does your pricing include?

Implementation

Integrations

Development

Training

Support

Unlimited support

Is there undocumented pricing on storage?

Are there product feature sets not included in the base price?

In the call center space, are there per port costs?

Pricing Flexibility

You might see really common pricing structures

across an industry. Some companies need to use

a product more seasonally or in response to

unforeseen events. Determine if there is flexibility for you to modify the pricing structure and

whether the existing pricing works for your

business.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Are there multiple pricing models?

Do you monitor usage to align with forecasted

usage?

Contractual flexibility

Most software companies (within SaaS and cloud based modelling) are valuated based upon

term to contract. Learn the extent to which you are bound to the contract.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Is there a standard annual termination for convenience clause?

What are the terms and costs associated with early termination?

Data

You want a place to maintain records securely for

an extended length of time. Be aware of what is

happening with your data, your access and any

compliance considerations.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

What is the process to access my

data?

Who is the accountable system of

record?

Do you have clauses in the terms and

conditions to account for who is the

system of record?

Is there anything in your disaster

recovery plan to ensure data loss

doesn’t happen?

Do you store snap shots in case of user error to recover lost data?

If we change providers or terminate the contract, do you have a process in place to

easily attain all your data?

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Security

Evaluate the specific security you need for your data and recognize the cost needed to maintain security. The company

needs to have solid security policies, backup policies and

clearly define their policies in their contract to move forward.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Is there live monitoring?

How long do security patches take to deploy?

Support

Support isn’t the sexiest thing to advertise and can be misconstrued,

but it’s also a hugely underrated criteria for choosing your next provider.

You don’t want to be arguing with someone in their second or third

language, only to find out the person can have no immediate impact on your issue. While all companies proclaim how much they care, it’s the

quality of what happens after the deal is closed that you should be hone

in on.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Where is the support located?

When is support available?

Is there a dedicated representative to handle calls?

How much support do I receive?

What type of support is not included in our contract price?

What is the average first response time? What type of troubleshooting information do you offer and where is it stored?

Development

A fraction of a company’s development should be comfortably

accepted offsite as long as the management was handled by

an in-house person. You don’t want to sign on with a company

who outsources a bulk of their work and has to make extensive

calls in order to start handling your issue. Learn a company’s

development practices to discover how aptly they will support

your impending needs.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

When code is outsourced, how do you control for

quality?

What are the development QA guidelines?

Are there alpha, beta and control change

processes?

Is the QA team in-house?

Implementation

The implementation process can get a little wonky if the company doesn’t have streamlined

processes in place. You should expect your implementation process to be timely and the range of

work accounted for.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Do you track your timeline accuracy?

(If yes) How close are you to the scoped timeline?

What happens in the event of scope creep?

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APIs

APIs are a big part of your success. It’s important to know you

have the documentation you need to accomplish your goals. You

don’t want to get stuck in something with realized misperceptions.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Do you provide an open API?

What are your limitations around APIs?

What does your API documentation look like?

Can I get access to bring in my own resources?

Are you willing to partner with my development group

to ensure well-implemented integrations?

Integrations

When looking for a new software provider, you need to

determine if it needs to be integrated into your existing

software landscape. Make sure to outline every aspect of the

integrations you need and allocate the necessary resources on

the front end for timeliness and scope alignment.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Is there an engineer who handles integrations?

Can you integrate with my current software?

Will you work with me to develop an integration to fit my needs?

Operations

Ask questions about implementation cycles and the standard

implementation walkthrough. If there’s any complexity, there should

be a good map or model for standard operating procedures. The

provider should be doing good discovery and if they’re not doing the

discovery on the front end, they probably won’t once they close the

deal.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

What are your operational processes for implementation?

What are your operational processes for transition from

implementation to support?

What is your customer retention rate?

Compliance (contact center specific)

In the contact center world, you can find software to technically handle compliance issues. Learn what the provider’s limitations and strengths are around protecting your business.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Do you incorporate the following solutions?

TCPA

Am I provided with the tools to maintain my own compliance?

PCI

Am I provided with the tools to maintain my own compliance?

To what level are you certified? HIPPA

Am I provided with the tools to maintain my own compliance?

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As you begin to probe into a

companies’ true practices,

you will be able to differentiate

a company’s marketing from

their priorities. Not every

software will have everything

you want, but it’s important

to look at a company against

the whole industry landscape

to see how well they do in

fact accommodate customer

needs versus the other way

around.

Bottom line, amazing support

is never underrated. And

there are those diamond in

the rough companies that

revolutionize an industry by

making what they do all about

the customer.

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Conclusion