Strong foundations
Getting the architecture right results in reduced costs and optionality for the business. Getting it wrong means you have to rewrite (been there, done that). Depending on the sophistication of the implementation that could be a death blow to an organization as they are having to deal with what is known as tech-debt while a competitor races past them.
So how do you know your architecture is right? It’s not a simple features comparison…. you’re going to need to get deep into the thinking of the partners and think two or three steps down the road.
Questions like where does the process belong, what is the system of truth, how is the storage going to scale? What are my costs going to be down the road, how much are developers going to cost me? What will happen as the system needs to be upgraded.
We've seen a lot.... and in technical realms that span far beyond just software. What stage of the technology cycle are we in? Are we in the integration phase where everthing is coming from a single vendor? If so what will happen as a technology predictably moves towards modularization?
What are the alternative approaches to accomplishing my goals? Am I risking getting trapped? These are big decisions and need to be thought through carefully. Remember the initial cost of a software deployment is typically 10% of the overall cost over the life of a project so you should be more concerned with ongoing maintenance expense than the upfront implementation expense.
Finally, what is my support going to look like? How big is the user community behind what I am doing? What will happen when I need to extend the capability of what is being proposed?