SunSystems live demos are perhaps the best way to get a feel of the product. By holding a demo with your SunSystems partner of choice, you’re setting the scene for getting a greater understanding of this powerful financial management system so you can see for yourself if the product is right for your organisation.

But here’s the thing:

Many prospective users often go into live demo sessions with a “passive attitude” where they simply take a seat while leaving all the work to the vendor. As a result, they end up not getting much value out of the product demonstration.

If you want the best SunSystems live demo for what you can get out of it, then you should think beyond just being present during the session and play a more participatory role in activities that come before, during, and after the demo.

This way, you’d be able to squeeze more creative juice out of the live demo and ultimately make a failproof decision. Here’s are the things to do:

Before the demo: Identify and communicate your requirements

Before going in for a demo, it is important that you first create your list of requirements. It’s about assessing your current accounting system to identify issues, needs, and gaps that need to be filled.

This is also the best time to identify your goals and the specific modules or features that can help you reach them.

By identifying your most important needs beforehand, your key goals with the new software, and what you need in the new system, you’d be in a position to get your demo provider to focus their attention on what’s most essential to your organisation during the demo.

The next step is to loop in your implementation partner so you can both be on the same page about what you want. Discovery calls work great for this.

For salespeople, a discovery call is generally an essential part of the lead qualification process. But as a prospective product user, you can also take advantage of it to improve your demo experience.

So before jumping into the actual demo, schedule a discovery call with the sales consultant to discuss your business goals, requirements, and so on.

During the demo: Follow a process script

The best demos do not follow a one-size-fits-all approach; they’re tailored to your organisation. And because your organisation is unique, your demo ought to reflect that.

Given the chance, consultants will always talk about the features or aspects of SunSystems that they “feel” would interest you. This may not be the best way to address your most important requirements.

To avoid this, you can create a script — based on the requirements you identified earlier — for the processes you’d like the demo leader to cover in their presentation.

This helps you to steer the demo in a way that supports a tailored experience and ultimately provides what’s best for your organisation.

Post demo: Debrief after the demo

Once the demo is over, it is recommended that you take some time (20 minutes to an hour is ideal) for team members to discuss their impressions and scrutinise the solution.

This can help bring out aspects of the presentation other team members might have missed and create a platform to hash out any issues or details they noticed.

It’s best to do this immediately after the demo. As you debrief, you’ll be able to determine your next steps, such as requesting a second demo or moving forward with implementation.

Conclusion

An effective SunSystems demonstration does not always start and end with the actual demo itself — you must think about and take active steps in driving activities that come before, during, and after the demo.

If you do a good job at identifying your needs, communicating the same to the seller, and creating an overview of what you want to go through during the demonstration, your demo experience will be much more worthwhile.

If you’re looking for a tailored SunSystems demo, get in touch with us today. We will take the time to understand your requirements, present you with a tailored demonstration and quotation, and then help you in implementing and supporting the software.

Part of this article was originally published on Infor by FinanSys.