The five questions to settle before any software demo

A demo is not a neutral event. It shows a product inside the workflow where it looks best, with clean sample data and no phone ringing in the background. That is entirely legitimate; every vendor does it that way, ourselves included. It just means that afterwards you are not deciding about the software, you are deciding about the performance.

What turns that around is five questions you answer for yourself before the first appointment. They cost you one evening, they are the same for every vendor, and they turn three incomparable presentations into three comparable answers. Not one of them is about features — feature lists are the part every vendor has mastered.

The usual answer is “we need something for appointments” or “something with invoices in it”. That is not a requirement, that is a product category. A requirement sounds like this: Every Sunday evening I spend about forty minutes pulling appointments together out of a diary, phone notes and messages. The difference is decisive, because only the second version can be checked after the demo.

Give yourself a week for this before you ring anybody. Every time something holds you up, write one line: what it was, how long it took, how often it happens. At the end of the week you have a list, and three items sit at the top of it. Those three are your yardstick. Everything else is pleasant, but it does not decide anything. Strikingly often the item at the top is taking appointments by phone — and how much of that work actually disappears is set out in what changes in the business when customers book for themselves.

Those three items are also why generic all-purpose software so often disappoints. A salon that runs series of follow-up appointments and regulars' preferences has a different top three from a garage that has to hold vehicle history, estimates and parts together. Both are “appointment management” and they are still two different programs — which you see the moment you put a salon system and a workshop system side by side and compare their opening screens.

Take the list into the demo on paper and ask to see exactly those three workflows. Not the tour — your three. A good product can take that. A vendor who steers around it has just given you an answer.

Software is chosen by the person who finds it interesting and operated by the person who does not. That is the commonest reason a system is only half used four months in: the diary runs, the customer history does not, because it sits three clicks deeper than a piece of paper.

So before the demo, count up who will actually be typing. The Saturday assistant. The cover who comes in every six weeks. You yourself, standing up, between two customers. For each of those people the same question applies: how long does it take them to create a record without help?

The device belongs to that same question. A system that looks magnificent on the vendor's 24-inch screen can be unusable on a tablet at the front desk — and the other way round. If you mostly work on the phone or out on the road, ask to see the demo on a mobile. Not as a screenshot, live.

If more than two people work in the system, a second question joins it: who is allowed to see what? Revenue, staff records, notes about customers — those are different levels of confidentiality. If you work alone, a fine-grained permissions system is not an advantage but extra setup that benefits nobody.

Software is chosen in a quiet hour and used in a loud one. That is why a demo on a Tuesday morning proves very little. The question that counts is this: how does the system behave on the day when everything happens at once?

Think of your own concrete worst day and describe it to the vendor. Saturday, just before lunch, three people waiting, the phone ringing, someone wanting to move an appointment, and of course that is the moment you notice yesterday's invoice is wrong. Ask to be shown those four tasks one after another. How many clicks, how many screen changes, how often do you have to abandon something half-finished to deal with something more urgent?

Two more cases belong to the worst day and hardly anyone asks about them. The first: the internet is down. What still works, and what is lost when the connection comes back? The second: you are ill and somebody else has to open up. Can that person get at the appointments without ringing you, and without knowing your password?

Both questions have legitimate answers. “Nothing works offline, but in exchange nothing is left half-saved when you reconnect” is an honest and good answer. What you do not want is no answer at all.

Everyone asks the entry question: can you bring my existing customers across? Almost nobody asks the exit question, and it is the more important one: how do I get my data back out if I leave in three years?

Both questions belong before the demo, not after the signature, because both are cheap at the start and expensive at the end. “Data migration included” is not a commitment until it says which data. Customer master records are the easy part. Appointment history, note fields, uploaded documents and the links between all of it are the part that takes work — and the part you only miss once it is missing.

So ask about four things specifically. What format does an export arrive in? Does it include history, notes and attachments, or only master records? Can I trigger it myself without asking support? And does it cost anything? Four short questions, four short answers — and if you have them confirmed by email, you have them in writing later. How much can genuinely fall by the wayside is covered in detail in Taking your customer data with you: what gets lost in a switch.

Any selection can go wrong, even a careful one. The difference between an irritation and an expensive year lies not in whether you were right, but in how quickly you can correct a wrong decision.

So before the demo, work out the cost of the way back once. It has four parts, and only the first one appears on the price list:

• Remaining term. How long do you keep paying if you give notice tomorrow?
• Getting the data back. Do you get out everything you put in?
• Invested time. Hours for setup, import and training that you have to spend a second time.
• Habits outside your business. A booking link customers have saved, a QR code on printed cards, a confirmation email everybody recognises.

The fourth point is the most underestimated, because it does not start out as money. It turns into money the week after the switch, when appointments keep arriving through the old address that nobody reads any more.

From that sum comes a simple rule for a first decision: when in doubt, take the shortest commitment the vendor offers, even if it costs a little more per month. The price difference is the insurance premium against being wrong. Which clauses actually govern your way back is set out in Term, notice and data export.