Choosing software without letting the demo decide

Free trials and polished demonstrations make every product look capable, and the costs that matter tend to show up during implementation. Buying often goes wrong: in Capterra’s survey of 3,385 people involved in buying software in 11 countries, published on 7 October 2025, two-thirds had run into disruption during implementation, regretted the purchase, or both.¹

Where selections go wrong

• The demo decides. Vendors show their product on their own data, along paths they’ve rehearsed. That shows the product in ideal conditions and says little about how it fits your work.
• Requirements inflate. Long lists of “must haves” copied from templates make every product look the same, and hide the few things that matter.
• Everything weighs the same. Without weights, a product that’s excellent at what you do every day can lose to one that ticks more boxes you’ll rarely use.
• The implementation is forgotten. The product is chosen; who will implement it, how and at what cost is discovered later. Implementation is also where regret shows: in the same survey, 89% of those who regretted a purchase had run into disruption during implementation.¹
• The costs stop at year one. Implementation, integration, training and annual increases come later, and they add up.

A sequence that holds up

1. Describe outcomes and scenarios. Write down what the business needs to achieve, and the real situations the product must handle: an order with a partial delivery, a month-end close, a customer with three sites.
2. Scan the whole market. Build a long list from analysts, peers and the market itself, as well as the vendors who called first.
3. Shortlist on the essentials. Three or four products that clearly meet the requirements you ranked as essential, from vendors that are financially healthy and support customers like you.
4. Script the demonstrations. Send each vendor your scenarios and sample data in advance, and have the people who will use the product score what they see on the same scorecard.
5. Talk to references, and test what’s risky. Speak to customers of a similar size and complexity. Where a requirement is unusual or critical, ask for a short proof of concept.
6. Compare five-year costs. Licences or subscriptions, implementation, integration, data migration, training, support and expected price increases, all on one basis.
7. Read the commercial terms early. Price caps, renewal terms, how you get your data back, service levels, and who the implementation partner will be.
8. Write the decision memo. The recommendation, the scores, the costs, the risks, and what to watch in the contract.

References at your scale

A reference helps when the customer looks like you. Ask each shortlisted vendor for customers of similar size and complexity: the number of users, countries and legal entities, and the modules you plan to use. Include one that went live recently and one that has been through an upgrade. Speak to them without the vendor on the call, and ask what took longer than planned, what they would set up differently, and what the system costs them now against the original proposal.

Choose the implementer in the same process.

The product and its implementation are bought together, even when the contracts are separate. Name the implementation partner, and the key people who will do the work, before you sign. Judge their plan and their experience with customers like you as carefully as you judged the product, and write the named people into the contract. If the vendor lets only certified partners implement its product, compare those partners too.

How long it should take

A selection doesn’t need to be slow. In the same survey, those who adopted their new software without disruption or regret typically chose it within three months, and longer timelines went with dissatisfaction.¹ Most of Capterra’s respondents worked at firms with fewer than 1,000 employees. For a core system at a large company, 8 to 12 weeks is usually enough for the selection itself, if the requirements work is done well.

Who should be in the room

The people who do the work score the demonstrations; the people who own the budget attend them; IT checks integration, security and support. If one of these groups is missing, its objections arrive later, usually during implementation.