Key Points to Consider

1. If a vendor is singing the praise of no maintenance you should be suspect. Remember software vendors need to support their clients and have a reasonable profit to stay in business. This may be feasible if they only have a handful of clients but as they grow you will be trapped with subpar support and scarce updates.

2. Just because a new software vendor touts his or hers experience as a pawn broker and that they developed the software to support their successful pawn operation does not mean that they can address the needs of the many.

3. Be leery of free offerings and bargain pricing, software vendors are in business too, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

4. If your current vendor (or one that you are speaking to) is touting the benefits of a hosted (Software-as-a-Service) solution, make sure that you have access to your data and that it is in a mutually agreed to format. Its the oldest trick in the book to trap you into a multi-year contract and to make it difficult for you to change systems because the data is in a proprietary format.

5. How many people do the vendors have dedicated to technical support and how many to development? If technical support is being done by the developer(s) you are destined to receive inadequate attention.

6. When comparing software vendors, remember to get a list of their most recent updates. Are they releasing updates regularly and are those updates mostly fixes or do they have new enhancements that bring more value?

7. A great pawn software system is more than a pretty screen that is simple to use. It does more than capture a transaction; it provides analytics that you can use to efficiently and effectively manage your shop. Actionable information will result in a positive return on investment for years to come.