• Compare & test tools: set-up these days should be relatively short (days/weeks) so you can compare vendors immediately on your own data and experiment with the system.  

• Similar use cases: type of industry, customer size, other systems they’ve used  

• Time of implementation. 

• Price and how pricing scales. This range from a few €100s/month for a very basic scope to a couple of €thousands/month to 100s of thousands for the major advanced planning providers. 
  

• Platform or individual solution: do they offer only demand planning or also other parts of the planning (inventory management, supply planning, production planning,...). 

• Cloud/on-premise: how will you get access to the software? Cloud is almost always the best approach these days unless you have absurdly sensitive data or specific internal guidelines, of course. 

• Customization or not? Will the party make changes to your environment, and if so, at what cost? What is on their roadmap for the future?  

• Implementation/support partners: who will help you if you have questions or issues? 

• Integration with your existing systems: ERP and your cloud environment 
  

• G2 

• Capterra 

• TrustRadius 

• Gartner 
  

• Best of breed vs platform solution 

• Vendors typically offer support mainly in a specific region 

• Pricing: typically either targeting small, mid, or large segment