A demo runs on a sample company with clean data, one entity, one state and no history. Yours has none of those things. The gap between the two is where implementations go over schedule.
Twelve questions. Each has the answer that should worry you attached, because the useful signal is usually in how a question gets handled rather than what gets said.
We implement two of these platforms, so read the last question as covering us too.
Before the demo starts
1. Can we run this on our data rather than yours? Send a sample: a handful of employees including someone paid hourly, someone in a second state, someone with a mid-year comp change. Watch it get loaded. Worrying answer: the sample company is the only environment available. You are being shown a rehearsal.
2. Who from your implementation team is on this call? Sales knows the roadmap. Implementation knows the constraints. The distance between those two accounts is the risk you are buying. Worrying answer: nobody, and no offer to bring somebody to the next one.
Configuration and permissions
3. Show me a manager's view of an employee record, then show me what that manager cannot see. Permissions are where HRIS demos are thinnest and where the real work sits. Ask for compensation specifically. Worrying answer: a slide describing the permission model instead of the screen.
4. How do we express an approval that changes by amount or by department? Every company has one. A comp change above a threshold routes differently, or a department has its own chain. Worrying answer: it requires the top administrative role to action, which means the exception becomes a person.
5. What happens to historical data when we change the org structure? Reorganizations happen more often than migrations. Ask whether last year's headcount by department still reports correctly after a department is merged. Worrying answer: reporting reflects the current structure only.
Payroll mechanics
6. Run a correction after payroll has been submitted. Off-cycles, voids and reversals are ordinary events, and they vary enormously between platforms. Worrying answer: support handles that.
7. Show a mid-period pay change and how it prorates. Then ask to see the same thing for an hourly employee, and for someone who changed state mid-period. Worrying answer: a manual calculation entered as an adjustment.
8. Which tax registrations do we hold, and which do you hold on our behalf? This question separates platforms cleanly, and the answer determines who is exposed when a filing is late. Worrying answer: an unqualified "we handle all of it" without naming the jurisdictions.
Integrations and reporting
9. Build a report in front of us, live. Headcount by department and location, as of a date three months ago. Worrying answer: the report library is shown instead, or it goes to a professional services request.
10. What does the integration to our accounting system actually pass, and how often? Named fields, named frequency. The word "integration" covers everything from a real-time sync to a scheduled file. Worrying answer: a logo grid.
Implementation, and afterwards
11. What is your implementation scope, in writing, and what falls outside it? The line usually sits at historical data, integrations, and rebuilt permissions and workflows. Those are the expensive parts. Worrying answer: the scope is described verbally and the statement of work arrives with the contract.
12. Who is accountable for the configuration in month four? Platform implementation teams hand over at go-live by design. That is the model, not a failing. It does mean the operating cadence afterwards belongs to somebody, and the answer should be a name. Worrying answer: a support queue.
What to do with the answers
Score them, but keep the recording. On a decision this size the useful comparison happens two weeks later, after four demos have blurred together, and memory reliably favours whoever demoed last.
Two platform-level questions sit underneath all twelve, and we have written those up separately: Rippling against HiBob on the platform choice itself, and what an implementation covers on the work that follows it.
If you want a second opinion on demos already run, book a 20-minute call.
Download this guide
Take the whole thing with you.
The whole guide as one PDF you can send to your team. We email it over.
One email, with the PDF attached. Nothing else.
Common questions
How many vendors should we demo?
Two or three, with the same scripted scenarios for each. Beyond that the sessions blur together and the comparison drifts toward whoever demoed last rather than whichever fits.
Should we run a formal RFP?
At 25 to 250 employees, rarely. A written scenario list and the same twelve questions put to every vendor produces a better comparison than an RFP document, in a fraction of the time.
Can we ask for a sandbox before signing?
Yes, and the response tells you something on its own. A trial environment loaded with a sample of your own data answers more than any number of guided demonstrations.