Contract management system requirements checklist
- Vendor A, weighted score out of ten
- 7.5
- Your weights add up to (should be 100)
- 100
- Vendor B, weighted score out of ten
- 7.5
Every figure on this page is computed from the inputs entered, by the method stated below it. Mustvo publishes no vendor ranking, no template library, no benchmark price and no opinion about which product is better in general: the requirements, the weights, the scores and the costs are yours, and the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own.
A contract management system requirements checklist is worth more as a scoring instrument than as a list, and most of them are written as a list. The difference is three things: each requirement is marked must, should or could; each has an owner who can settle what it means; and each is weighted so the scoring cannot be won by volume of easy items. Get those three right and the shortlist ranks itself. Get them wrong and the selection is decided by whoever demos last. This page sets out what the checklist has to contain, how to run the scoring so the result survives being questioned, and what to do when two vendors tie. On the worked example they very nearly do: both average 7.67 unweighted and the weighting separates them by 0.05, which is a tie honestly reported. All three figures on this page are worked by free sheets on this site with no account.
Open the Learning management system requirements Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Write the list as musts, shoulds and coulds
The test for a must is whether you would walk away from a vendor over it. Applied honestly it usually shortens the must list a lot, and that is the point: a list where everything is mandatory cannot discriminate between vendors and will not survive the first compromise.
Weight the groups before you meet anyone
Weights agreed after a demo describe the demo. Agree them first with the departments who own the requirements, and record who agreed, because the weights decide the outcome more often than the scores do.
Score, then cost, then decide
Run the scoring sheet for fit, the coverage sheet for the gaps and what they cost in workaround hours, and the cost of ownership sheet for the five-year figure. Three numbers, produced the same way for each vendor, is a defensible decision; a preference plus a quote is not.
Contract management system requirements checklist: common questions
How many requirements should a checklist have?
Few enough that each one is genuinely scored. Lists past about fifty tend to be filled in by pattern rather than by judgement, and a long list of unscored items is worse than a short list of scored ones.
Should I send the checklist to vendors?
Usually yes, and expect optimistic answers. The scoring is yours to do from what you see in a demo and hear on reference calls, not from the vendor's own marks against their own product.
What if two vendors tie?
Say so. A 0.05 gap is a tie, and pretending otherwise puts false precision behind a decision. Let the contract terms, the reference calls or the cost of ownership figure settle it, and record which one did.
Will it do what you need for Contract management system requirements checklist?
Tell us what your selection needs and we will tell you straight whether Mustvo Pro does it today, whether it is coming, or whether a spreadsheet is genuinely enough. A person reads these and replies.