LOS reference check guide

A question bank for speaking with existing customers of an LOS vendor, focused on delivery reality, governance, and long-term operating outcomes.

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What this template helps you do

Questions for implementation experience and delivery risk

Questions for integrations, testing, and error handling

Questions for governance and auditability

Questions for support, upgrades, and roadmap transparency

Avoid “do you like the vendor?” questions. Ask what happened during rollout, what surprised them, and what they would do differently now. The reference call is the most reliable signal of how delivery will actually go.

Worksheet · Recommended RFP sections

01
Customer profile and operating model
Products, volumes, segments, and how similar they are to yours.
02
Selection and decision context
Why this vendor, what they replaced, what they considered.
03
Implementation experience
Approach, milestones, surprises, and what would have gone faster.
04
Integrations and data flows
What was pre-built vs custom, how partner changes were handled.
05
Policy, workflow, and change
How policy and workflow change is governed in business-as-usual.
06
Day-2 operations and support
Incidents, upgrades, performance, and the vendor’s real responsiveness.
07
Outcomes and measurement
What materially moved, and how they evidence it.
08
What they would do differently
The single most useful question on the call.

Preview · sample questions

Question bank preview

Implementation

·
What did you underestimate (integrations, testing, change management)?
·
How long did the first thin slice take from kickoff to go-live?
·
What was the vendor’s strongest contribution during delivery?

Integrations & technical reality

·
Which integrations were pre-built vs custom?
·
How were retries, timeouts, and observability handled in production?
·
What happened the last time a third-party endpoint changed?

Policy, workflow & change

·
How do you change policy, workflow, and templates safely now?
·
What approvals and testing are required before a change ships?
·
How is in-flight work re-routed when policy or assignees change?

Governance & audit

·
What audit evidence is easy to retrieve? What isn’t?
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How do you handle overrides, exceptions, and four-eyes controls?
·
How have regulators or auditors reacted to the evidence model?

Day-2 support

·
How does the vendor respond during incidents and upgrades?
·
What unplanned work has shown up in operations?
·
How transparent is the roadmap and change cadence?

Outcomes & retrospect

·
What measurably improved, and how do you evidence it?
·
What would you do differently if you were starting again?
·
Would you select the same vendor today?

Tip

Always speak with at least one reference that operationally resembles you, and one that doesn’t. The contrast is often the most useful part of the exercise.

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