When I must choose a supplier, I want to know whether they can do what they promise, so I do not sign something I will live with for years.

Job context

Who

Whoever is accountable for the choice

When

During the evaluation

Trigger

A previous supplier failing to deliver what was promised

Situation

Every piece of information comes from the party selling

Constraints

The evaluation is far shorter than the contract

5 Pains

• A demonstration says nothing about year two

  High

  Everything runs smoothly for thirty minutes.

  Root cause: A demonstration is built so that nothing fails

• Reference customers are chosen by the seller

  High

  So only the satisfied ones are offered.

  Root cause: The seller controls who you are allowed to speak to

• Not knowing what to ask to expose a weakness

  High

  The seller has prepared for every common question.

  Root cause: The seller does this hundreds of times and the buyer a handful

• Changing supplier later is very hard

  High

  Data and habits are already inside.

  Root cause: Switching cost grows with every day of use

• The decider is not the user

  Medium

  So the selection criteria differ from the usage ones.

  Root cause: Procurement is built around whoever signs

6 Desired Outcomes

• Know what a supplier is like after a year

  Functional

• Speak with customers the seller did not choose

  Functional

• Know the questions that expose weaknesses

  Functional

• Keep the ability to change supplier

  Functional

• Have the real users' voice in the decision

  Social

• Not spend years wondering whether they signed the wrong thing

  Emotional

5 Existing Solutions

A solution is not the same thing as a product, a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

• Watch a product demonstration

  Product

  A required step, staged so that nothing fails.

• Call the reference customers

  Behaviour

  Far more useful than a demonstration, from a list the seller supplied.

• Run a small pilot

  Behaviour

  The only way to see the truth, blind to year two.

• Find other users outside the list

  Workaround

  The most honest source, requiring effort and a network.

• Negotiate an exit clause

  Behaviour

  The most effective protection, skipped because everyone is optimistic at signing.

2 Opportunity Gaps

• The only parties describing a supplier are the supplier and the customers they select, while whoever knows the truth of year two cannot be reached.

  Why existing solutions fail: A disappointed customer is usually bound by contract and unwilling to admit a poor choice, so the group holding the most valuable information is the quietest.

  Potential opportunity: A way to collect year-two experience where honesty costs the teller nothing.

• Procurement serves whoever signs while the system lives or dies by its daily users, and the scoring matrix is written by the former.

  Why existing solutions fail: The matrix scores what the buyer can verify, features, price, security, not what decides whether the system gets used, because that only appears after deployment.

  Potential opportunity: Giving a group of real users a veto during the pilot rather than a comment.