The Reference Site Visit Checklist below lists 50 questions to ask and points to consider when visiting a software vendor’s reference site. Reference site details  Organisation name  Organisation address  Contact name / job title  Contact telephone  Contact email  Organisation background eg industry, turnover, number of employees, locations  Visit date / time  Who from your company attending the site visit SOFTWARE Background  Overview of reference site's software set-up  Why did they choose this software / this vendor?  What and who else did they look at, in their selection process?  Modules purchased, implemented, live running?  Software versions used?  Number of system users?  How long live running?  How often have they been used as a reference site? Implementation  What was implemented and when?  Were any modifications or system tailoring made?  How did they implement the software? in phases? a roll out? over what time scales?  Was the software implemented on new or upgraded, or existing hardware, network, database, operating system?  What type and number of software faults / bugs were found during testing? Were there any major ones?  Data conversion - how much historical and current data was taken on to the new system?  How were users trained? by software vendors or internally?  Who was involved with the implementation? internal staff, vendor or other external resources?  What support was required from internal IT department?  What were vendor resources tasks / responsibilities? who was involved? how well did they do?  Were there any implementation problems or issues? Live running  How reliable is the software?  How easy is the software to use?  Have they found the software flexible enough?  Is the software performance adequate?  Are there any issues with security?  How good is reporting?  Does the software do what the vendors claim it to do?  Has the software met their expectations?  What benefits are they getting from their new system? VENDOR SERVICES  Which vendor services have they used? eg customer support, vendor training, consultancy, documentation, user guides, knowledgebase?  How would they rate the vendor services?  How good / useful is customer support, help desk?  Is there a difference in customer support between implementation and live running?  How responsive is customer support to reported faults / queries?  How many upgrades have they received and with what frequency?  How regular is vendor contact?  Do they have a dedicated account manager to contact if they need to?  How useful are the vendor's newsletters, emails, conferences, workshops, user groups? LESSONS LEARNED  What are / were the key issues for them regarding the software, its selection, implementation and vendor services?  What would they do differently?  Would they buy the same software again?  What recommendations would they make?  Is there anything else we should be aware of? For more due diligence checklists and questions, visit: Software vendor support, Implementation support, Reference site visit checklist, Vendor accounts, Vendor personnel, Vendor software product development, Software payment terms, Final software decision, Software agreement checklist