The software vendor-customer relationship is a long term partnership. Be certain the vendor is committed to the success of that partnership. Do they specialize in serving the needs of the professional services firm and do they have a long track record of doing so? How large is their customer base? Will the vendor demonstrate their product in person and is the staff you interact with knowledgeable of your industry and government contract requirements? Check to see if the vendor maintains user groups in the area and if possible attend a meeting in advance of your purchase. And finally, and perhaps most important, how responsive is the vendor to your calls and requests during the evaluation period? Any lack of responsiveness at this time is a major cause for concern.

Support and Training. The success of your implementation and on-going use of the system will be integrally tied to the training and technical support resources provided by the vendor. Are the training services provided locally or must trainers be flown in at great expense? How much training does the vendor estimate for a successful implementation? What kind of on-going training opportunities (e.g. classroom seminars) are available and where are they located? What is the turnaround on calls placed with the support center? Does the vendor offer a self service support web site available 24/7 and how useful is the web site? Be certain the vendor can use the internet to tap directly into your application for web based problem solving. Check out the User Guides, which should be well organized, expertly written, and comprehensive with their contents available in the help system.

Maintenance. Software applications that serve the government contractor must evolve in response to changes in technology, government requirements and customer needs/preferences and program errors. The vendor must demonstrate prudent and timely response to all of these factors. They should offer a maintenance program with regularly scheduled updates. They should also have a track-record of seeking customer input regarding product enhancements and responding to that input in a responsible and timely manner.

Conversion. You probably have a lot of data in your current accounting system and it could be a real time saver to convert this data to your new system. The vendor should offer conversion services, with a variety of options regarding the type of data that will be converted.

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