Two vendors each drop a feature list. One tick, then another tick. In the showroom both can ring up “soup.” Saturday lunch here means merge tables, split a check, drop the cilantro on one dish, and print kitchen paper to the hot pass — none of that is on the feature list. Do not start comparing systems from the ticks. Start from the few things this shop must prove.
Write the comparison on one checklist. Each cell allows only: verified here, failed, or still unknown. A verbal “we have that” is not verified.
Do not compare feature names — compare whether a busy day can finish
List the steps a real busy day here will hit: open a table, change an order, send to kitchen, take payment, split a check, void. Who tests: the person who cashed Friday night, not the salesperson, and not someone who only clicked in the office. Use this shop’s menu, prices and machines. No coaching from the side.
Scene: Vendor A demos “split check” smoothly. Here two guests each pay half, one half on card — the terminal says fail, and the screen does not show whether money left the card. “Supports split tender” stays ticked on the feature list; on the checklist that cell is failed or still unknown until the person on shift runs it alone.
If the busy day did not finish, a long feature list does not enter the comparison conclusion.
Migration sample, rollback, support hours, exit files: four rows on the same sheet
Ask every party under review for written notes you can keep. Check them on site. Do not copy their slides.
Migration sample: get a trial export; import a cleaned sample from this shop into a non-production environment. Match counts and identifiers, not whether the screen “looks right.” One row short — note which class of record it was.
Rollback: when you must stop, who may decide, how long the old system stays, in what order you cut back — in writing, and rehearsed once with the people who will actually do it. “You can roll back” from the vendor is not the same as this shop already being able to.
Support hours: language, channel, weekends and holidays (if this shop trades then). First reply, temporary workaround, how you recover — three cells. Answering the phone is not the same as taking payments again.
Exit files: sample item, ticket, payment, day-end and change-log files. Open them on a computer in this shop. Write whether you can still reconcile after you leave their account.
Scene: both quotes attach “7×24 support.” One writes weekday remote, first reply in two hours; the other says verbally someone covers weekends, nothing on paper. Saturday 21:00 the card terminal dies. If the sheet already marked “hours not verified,” you will not score the two vendors the same.
Any of the four cells empty stays still unknown. Unknown is not “roughly the same.”
A feature demo is a clue, not evidence
A demo can tip which step to test. It cannot sign for this shop. On the same sheet, items that passed in a demo stay still unknown until shift staff did them on this shop’s network and devices.
Scene: sales clicks through “menu import” on showroom fake dishes. Soup names here carry accents; the sample is short on combo sub-items. The cell ticked on demo day goes back to still unknown.
When comparison ends, only cells this shop can tick should remain. If the sheet is not full, it is not time to circle a cutover date.
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