Before a large vendor selection goes to the board, war-game it. Fix the criteria and weights before the demos, price the full term including implementation, internal staff, parallel running, and fees that grow with volume, and write down how you would leave. Check how much of the business would depend on one vendor. Paste the scorecard, both proposals, the draft contract, your volume forecast, and reference notes into one request. Instruct Pingpong to flag weights that changed after the demos, costs missing from the total, exit terms that make leaving impractical, and single points of failure with no fallback. Review your written answers in a second round.
This page is for executives preparing a vendor decision large enough that the board will approve it or ask about it. Counsel owns contract and legal review. Pingpong checks the decision for consistency and readiness. Executive starting points live under Pingpong for executives.
What must be true before signing
- The criteria and weights were set before anyone saw a demo, and nobody changed them afterward without saying so.
- The total cost covers the full term: license, implementation, internal people, running the old system in parallel, and fees at your planned volume.
- You know what share of revenue or operations would depend on this vendor, and you have a fallback if it goes down.
- You could leave: data comes back in a usable format, notice periods are reasonable, and renewal prices are capped.
- At least two references came from your own network, outside the vendor's list.
Why scorecards drift toward the favorite
Most selection teams have a favorite by the second demo. Nobody says it out loud. The weights move a little toward what the favorite does well, the references come from the favorite's list, and the hard questions about exit terms get deferred to legal, where they arrive too late to change the choice. None of this is dishonest; people get excited about a tool that will make their work easier. A scorecard where the winner leads every category invites suspicion, and directors who have lived through a painful migration ask about the exit before features.
A worked example
This example is illustrative and does not describe a customer. A 350-person company is replacing its billing and payments platform. The favored vendor proposes a five-year contract at $2.4 million a year. The board must approve any commitment above $5 million.
The finance leader pastes the scorecard, proposals, draft contract, volume forecast, and reference notes.
A useful pass finds that the weight on product demo rose from 20 to 30 percent after the demos, which moved the favored vendor from second to first. The proposal shows $12 million over five years, but the full cost is closer to $16.8 million: $1.1 million for an implementation partner, about $0.9 million for six internal staff over nine months, $0.3 million to run the old system in parallel for four months, and $2.5 million more in transaction fees as volume grows. All revenue would flow through this one vendor with no fallback. The contract exports data only in the vendor's own format, renews automatically with twelve months' notice, and has no cap on renewal pricing. All three references came from the vendor.
The team re-scores both finalists with the original weights, and the favored vendor still wins, narrowly. The board paper shows the $16.8 million total cost. A second processor handles 15 percent of volume as a fallback. Counsel negotiates data export in a standard format, termination for convenience after year two, and a cap on renewal increases. Two independent references are added, and one describes a slow migration that reshapes the implementation plan.
What the board will look at
- Total cost: the full term, compared with the sticker, and how it changes if volume beats plan.
- Concentration: how much of the business depends on the vendor, and the fallback.
- Exit: what leaving would cost and how long it would take.
- The runner-up: why it lost, in a sentence, and whether it remains a credible alternative.
- Walk-away terms: what the team would refuse to sign.
For pricing the term and exit on any contract, see before you sign the contract: price the full term and the exit.
A request you can copy
Below are our vendor scorecard with its weights, both finalists' proposals, the draft contract, our volume forecast, and reference notes. Check whether weights changed after the demos and whether the result holds with the original weights. Build a full-term total cost. Flag concentration risk with no fallback and exit terms that make leaving impractical. List what the board is likely to ask. Stop there so we can answer in writing, then review our answers.
How Pingpong runs the review
The web review app sends your request through several models in order. Each later model receives the original request and every earlier answer, with instructions to assess the work so far. For the steps inside the app, see running your first review.
What a model can't review
A model cannot judge whether a vendor's team will still be there in two years or how they behave when something breaks. Pingpong checks whether the decision holds together on paper.
When the decision goes to the board, see war-game a decision before the board meeting. More guides live under work decisions before you commit.