Product guides
Principal’s demo checklist - 15 questions that expose weak ERPs
Use this in every vendor walkthrough: data handoffs, publish gates, parent portal scope, and what your teams feel in week one.
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Before the demo
Send vendors your top three pain points and insist they demo those flows first - not a generic homepage tour.
Questions that reveal integration depth
- Show me an accepted admission becoming a billable student record.
- What happens to fee balances when a child changes section mid-year?
- How do you prevent families seeing exam marks before approval?
- Where does attendance data come from for parent summaries?
- Can finance export defaulter lists without asking IT for a custom report?
Questions about people and rollout
- Which roles ship on day one vs phase two?
- How do substitutes see timetable changes on mobile?
- What training format do you provide for front office staff?
- Who owns data migration from our current sheets?
After the demo
Ask for a written rollout order matched to your academic calendar - admissions season, fee cycles, and exam windows included.
Frequently asked questions
Straightforward answers for visitors evaluating the product.
What should a school ask every software vendor to demonstrate?+
Ask for one accepted admission becoming a student record, one fee receipt, one publish-gated result, and role-scoped views for teachers and families.
Use your own awkward case and require the vendor to show each handoff rather than answering with a feature checklist.
Should a demo cover implementation as well as features?+
Yes.
Request the rollout order, data migration owner, training approach, support path, and any capability that depends on deployment configuration.
