How CIOs Can Evaluate Enterprise Software Vendors
CIO Dive, Monday, July 27th, 2026
CIOs should evaluate vendors across functional domains rather than checklists, weighting criteria to match organizational constraints.
Sudhakar Shivaraju, VP of global real estate systems at JPMorgan Chase, argues that enterprise software evaluations fail when leaders assess the wrong criteria or apply incorrect weightings.
He recommends structuring evaluations around six functional domains: security and compliance, integration and API architecture, user experience, vendor support and roadmap transparency, AI capabilities, and total cost of ownership.
Critical to success is honestly accounting for switching costs, distinguishing between current capabilities and roadmap promises, and tailoring domain weightings to actual organizational constraints rather than applying generic templates.