TL;DR
- A POC needs agreed criteria, owners, evidence and a decision date. “The demo went well” is not technical acceptance.
- For six concurrent evaluations with five criteria each, start with a 30-criterion register linked to the CRM. Buy specialist presales software when resource coordination and repeated evaluation work exceed that simpler system.
- Homerun is a supported specialist shortlist candidate for POC/POV evaluation plans and deal workspaces. Vivun's current public site emphasises Hero and technical call assistance; do not assume historical POC-management descriptions establish the current package. Success remains a named presales route whose current feature/price pages could not be verified here.
- Technical success, business value and commercial commitment are separate decisions. Preserve each rather than force one overall green status.
Agree what the evaluation must prove
An enterprise buyer asks for a POC to verify that your product works with its identity system and data. During the evaluation, another stakeholder asks for an unrelated workflow. The team builds it, the deadline passes and nobody agrees whether the original requirement succeeded.
Prevent that by writing the decision contract before providing an environment. State the buyer's question, criteria, data, owners, dependencies, time window and final decision. A proof of concept tests feasibility. A proof of value may test a business outcome. A pilot may include operational adoption. Name the activity accurately.
Keep a criterion specific enough that two people can agree on the result. “Easy to use” is not inspectable without a task and acceptance definition. “Three nominated users complete the approved import workflow without engineering intervention” is a testable proposal, subject to the buyer accepting that scope.
The ABM sales research guide helps establish stakeholder context. This page owns the technical evaluation and sign-off that follows.
Choose an operating system for six POCs
| Approach | Best fit | Useful control | Cost basis | Main boundary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRM plus controlled evaluation register | Six manageable POCs with clear ownership | Opportunity linkage and criterion evidence | Existing licences plus administration | Weak if resource coordination and versioning become manual chaos |
| Specialist presales platform | Repeated complex evaluations across engineers | Resource, engagement and evaluation coordination where demonstrated | Users, integrations, programme scope and implementation | Requires current feature validation and process ownership |
| Buyer collaboration room | Shared plan and evidence with the customer | Customer access and milestone communication | Room users, integrations and scope | Does not automatically supply technical test management |
| Project-management tool | Delivery-like evaluations with many tasks | Dependencies and engineering work | Seats plus CRM/evidence integration | Tasks alone do not establish buyer acceptance |
Our practical recommendation is the simplest system that preserves the decision and gives the engineering manager capacity visibility. Avoid buying a broad platform before agreeing on criteria, but also avoid maintaining several conflicting registers once repeated evaluations become operationally expensive.
Current vendor evidence and its limits
Vivun's current homepage presents Hero as real-time technical assistance for sellers, grounded in product and deal context. That may help answer questions during an evaluation, but it does not by itself establish a current POC criterion register, resource plan or customer sign-off workflow.
For a team considering Vivun, demonstrate those exact functions in the proposed enterprise package. Historical presales material is useful context, not current proof of entitlement. No scope-comparable price was verified here. A live answer assistant is a separate capability from an evaluation system of record; buy each for its supported task.
Success App's company profile identifies it as a presales CRM. Its homepage and feature page timed out during bounded research on 6 October 2026. We therefore do not assert current integrations, plan limits, prices or feature absence. Treat it as a candidate requiring a current demonstration, not a supported winner on facts we could not inspect.
That uncertainty does not prevent the operating recommendation. The acceptance contract below can be implemented in existing tools and used to evaluate any specialist platform. A vendor must show the actual evidence and customer decision workflow before the organisation depends on it.
Homerun for repeatable evaluation plans
Homerun's current platform explicitly describes POC/POV evaluation plans, repeatable templates, presales deal workspaces, product-gap tracking and team dashboards. Those documented capabilities make it a more directly supported specialist candidate for this article's decision than an assumed historical package from another provider.
The buying reason is connecting the evaluation plan with the wider presales work around the deal. Engineers can maintain a common structure while managers inspect blocked activity and product gaps. CRM connectivity is also presented publicly; confirm the actual objects, permissions and update behaviour in the proposed deployment.
Choose Homerun when repeatable evaluations and cross-engineer visibility justify a dedicated presales workspace. It is less compelling if six small POCs already have a reliable register and the team would merely duplicate administration. No current public package amount or confirmed billing unit was established. Ask for the subscription unit, participating engineers and managers, customer collaboration, integrations, environments, onboarding and support on one quote. Do not assume a deal workspace is billed per POC or that an internal dashboard establishes customer sign-off.
For a buying test, load one of the five-criterion plans below, add a blocked buyer dependency, revise a criterion and export the evidence for delivery handoff. Confirm whether the customer can acknowledge acceptance and whether that acknowledgement survives a later edit. Keep any unsupported requirement in a separate controlled process. This is a proposed evaluation, not a claim that we ran the platform or measured its advertised win-rate improvements.
Write five inspectable criteria
For the proposed six POCs, five criteria each create 30 tracked acceptance items. Give each item a buyer owner, supplier owner, agreed test, evidence location and disposition. Separate pending, passed, failed, blocked and waived. A waived requirement is not a passed test.
For an illustrative evaluation of a revenue-data product, the five criteria might cover identity integration, data import, permission isolation, an agreed reporting task and operational recovery. These are examples, not a universal checklist or claims about any vendor.
An identity criterion could require nominated users to authenticate through the buyer's approved method in the evaluation environment. Record configuration, test account, date and observed result. A performance criterion should specify dataset, environment, measurement method and threshold agreed by the buyer. Do not invent a benchmark merely because the customer asked for a number.
Agree what happens when a dependency is unavailable. If the buyer has not provided data, record the item blocked and the revised plan. Do not mark it failed against the product or quietly demonstrate a synthetic dataset as if it were the customer's result.
Use the RevOps CRM setup playbook to link the evaluation, account and opportunity without storing sensitive test evidence in broadly visible CRM notes.
Keep evidence attached to the decision
For each criterion, store the approved definition and revision, evidence, reviewer and decision. A screenshot can help, but it may not show the test's full conditions. Preserve enough reproducible context to explain what was established and what remains untested.
Let the buyer inspect the shared criteria through the appropriate digital sales room or controlled workspace. Internal product limitations and private negotiation can remain in authorised internal systems. Access should match the evidence, not simply inherit every opportunity user's permissions.
In a hypothetical status review, 22 of 30 criteria pass, four are blocked by buyer dependencies, two fail and two are waived. Reporting “28 complete” obscures the two failures and the waived requirements. Show dispositions separately and explain whether the remaining risk prevents a buying decision.
Record changes as revisions. If a stakeholder adds a sixth criterion, agree its owner, effort and effect on the deadline. A new task should not retroactively make the original plan appear incomplete or disappear from the commercial scope.
Control scope and resource cost
Assume each of 30 criteria requires two engineering hours to prepare, run and document. That is 60 hours. Six weekly coordination sessions at 30 minutes add three hours per week. Over four weeks, coordination adds 12 hours, producing a 72-hour illustrative workload.
At an assumed £75 loaded engineering hourly cost, the total is £5,400 before infrastructure, software and rework. These are planning assumptions, not observed POC results or vendor prices. If five unplanned tasks each require four hours, scope expansion adds 20 hours, or £1,500 under the same assumption.
Buy specialist software when it reduces a demonstrated coordination burden or improves evidence control enough to justify the contract and implementation. A small licence saving is irrelevant if the team repeatedly runs open-ended evaluations with no decision owner.
Track active evaluations, committed capacity, blocked work and rework. Avoid rewarding engineers for the number of POCs started. Six well-scoped evaluations can be healthier than twelve stalled ones consuming the same scarce specialists.
Close the evaluation deliberately
Hold a final decision meeting against the criteria. Record technical result, business value, remaining risks and the customer's next commercial action separately. A technically successful evaluation can still end in no purchase because funding or timing changed.
Convert confirmed requirements into implementation handoff material. Keep waived or unresolved items visible so delivery does not inherit an unrealistic promise. Decommission environments and revoke temporary access according to the agreed retention plan.
Use CRM proposal tools for the commercial document after the technical decision. The POC should support that document with evidence, not become an indefinite substitute for a buying process.
FAQ
Should every enterprise deal include a POC?
No. Use one when a consequential uncertainty cannot be resolved through existing evidence, a demonstration or reference. A POC has real engineering and customer cost. Require a clear question and decision path before starting.
Who signs off a technical criterion?
The agreed buyer owner should confirm acceptance with the supplier's evidence owner. Commercial sponsors may need to accept remaining risk, but a salesperson should not mark a technical test passed solely because the deal is urgent.
Can synthetic data establish success?
It can establish behaviour under the stated synthetic conditions. It cannot automatically establish performance, quality or integration with the buyer's actual data. Label the dataset and leave untested customer-specific requirements unresolved.
What if the buyer changes the scope halfway through?
Agree a revised criterion, owner, effort and decision date. Preserve the original plan and explain the commercial consequence. An uncontrolled change should not silently consume engineering capacity or become an unsupported contractual commitment.
