Conducting RFP Software Demos
Photo credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahtZayhxb5U - please do yourself a favor and take a minute to watch this video from the “Will it Blend?” series.
Comparing software options? I will get you meaningful demonstrations and help your team look past the demo’s surface shine to get a real sense of the solution.
Conducting a demonstration as a final step in competitive procurement is your one opportunity to poke and prod a solution and see how they address your needs.
For over thirty years I have watched hundreds of hours of demonstrations – and presented hundreds more during my time as the lead sales engineer. I delivered multi-day scripted demos for government ERP proposals priced in the tens of millions.
I can help you write a demonstration script that will keep vendors honest and focused.
For example, the City of Urbana needed software demonstrations when three major systems were all up for replacement: Finance, Enterprise Asset Management, and Permitting/Licensing. We conducted a three-part procurement that allowed vendors to bid on one, two, or three of these; I crafted demonstration scripts that highlighted each area’s key needs.
The scripts made the demo tell a story, with information entered in earlier steps being used in later ones. (The better to prevent faked pre-entry data… and to keep the audience interested!)
Before the demos, I coached our people on what to watch for - how to see if steps were easy and logical, or complicated and tricky.
We wanted to know if there was one system that could meet our needs in a unified package. Our demonstrations were a success! We learned that one system did not meet our needs, avoiding getting mired in a compromise solution that no one liked. Instead, each group chose a different system. Yes, it meant three contracts, three implementations, and three systems to manage. But they chose meaningfully, and (as of this writing seven years later) they are all still using them.
From that experience, I wrote this guidance for watching demonstrations that you can share with your team: https://blog.tectonicspeed.com/2015/10/lets-make-software-demos-meaningful.html