Guide
Choosing an operating platform: a checklist
Twelve questions to put to any vendor — including us — before you trust them with how your institution runs.
Whether you’re evaluating eiQora, an off-the-shelf suite, or a local developer, the questions that matter are the same. Bring these twelve into every conversation, and insist on plain-language answers.
On fit
1. Show me my busiest weekly workflow in your system, step by step. (Vague answers here predict vague software.)
2. What happens to the parts of our process your system doesn’t support — do we change, or does it?
3. Who else like us runs on this? What broke for them in the first three months?
On data
4. Who owns our data, in writing?
5. Can we export everything, in open formats, without asking permission — today and on the day we leave?
6. Is our data isolated from other customers, or pooled in shared tables?
7. What is your backup and recovery story — and when did you last actually restore from it?
On the relationship
8. Who do we talk to when something breaks — a queue, or a person who can fix it?
9. How do new needs get added: a roadmap vote, a change order, or a conversation?
10. What does year two cost, not just year one?
11. If we outgrow you or you shut down, what does the exit look like in practice?
12. What should we NOT use your product for? (Every honest vendor has an answer.)
We publish our own answers to all twelve on our security page and in discovery conversations — and we think any vendor who won’t deserves a shorter meeting.
Sound like your institution?
A discovery conversation applies this thinking to your actual workflows — no pitch, just the map.