Obviously the point of an eval is to understand as much about the product as possible in the least amount of time.
But my biggest bureaucratic time sink is getting pricing and sometimes an eval copy or a manual. The later seeming to require an NDA, which I'm at the point of refusing on principle.
The manual turns out to be quite important. After buying Sonic MQ/ESB, some of the sticky details that seemed to nice to be true, practically weren't true. I hesitate to say they were lies, but they were definitely in legion with false.
And if the manuals don't answer my questions, I'm damn sure the sales engineer won't return my calls in a timely fashion after we issue a PO. If he does, it's to tell me to call support.
So,
- Market research
- Industry Analysts
- Onsite/Online Demo
- Manuals
- Cull the herd
- Pilot
- Purchase
This seems self apparent in hindsight, but I think the key here, again, is using the manuals to answer your questions, and getting clarity with the sales team if an answer is non-obvious. This in turn may take more time, but feeling you were mislead after an agreement is made is worse, even if they aren't show stopper issues.
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