Questions to ask before any vendor touches your core systems.
Key takeaways
It's simpler for a vendor to sell a full platform swap than to integrate cleanly with what you already run, so that's often the default pitch, even when it isn't what your business actually needs.
A checklist forces the conversation back to the specific workflow you're trying to fix, rather than the size of the deal the vendor would rather sell.
Before any tool connects to a core system, get a plain-language answer to what data it reads, what it can write, and whether that access can be scoped down or revoked without disrupting the rest of the setup.
If a vendor can't answer this clearly, that's usually a sign the integration hasn't been designed carefully enough yet.
A copy of real (anonymized where needed) data is the only reliable way to see how a new integration behaves on your actual messy records, rather than a clean demo dataset.
This step catches the majority of integration surprises before they can affect a live customer or transaction.
Every integration should have a documented way to pause or disconnect it without losing data, agreed on before launch, not improvised during an incident.
Firms that skip this step tend to discover it the hard way, usually at the worst possible time.
A 30-minute call is enough to tell you whether AI pays for itself here.
