A CRM requirements checklist for brokerages
Eighteen requirements you can score any vendor against, including us. Free CSV, no email address required.
Take it into the demo and fill it in while you are watching, not afterwards. The point of a scorecard is to make you ask the question you would otherwise be too polite to ask.
Where CovioIQ scores badly on its own sheet
A requirements list written by a vendor is usually a list of things that vendor does. This one is not, and the quickest way to prove it is to tell you where we lose marks.
- "It connects to your broker management system" — we score 0. CovioIQ has no BMS integration. Your book comes in by CSV, and Applied Epic, Vertafore SIG and Power Broker are marked planned on our integrations page with no committed dates. If that requirement is a must for you, score us honestly and move on.
- "Email and calendar connect to your provider" — 0 as well. Gmail and Outlook sync is not built.
- On the hosting and AI rows we score well, and the second one has a catch worth knowing. Your data sits in Canada, but the optional Alex assistant sends the records it needs to Anthropic in the United States, with client email, phone, address and date of birth withheld. That is written up on our AI transparency page. Ask every vendor the same question, because "hosted in Canada" and "processed in Canada" are different sentences.
How to score it
- 0Not available. Say so rather than leaving it blank.
- 1Partial, or on a roadmap with no date. Treat roadmap as zero when it is a must.
- 2Available, but you only have their word for it.
- 3Demonstrated. You saw it work on data resembling yours.
The evidence column is the important one
Every vendor scorecard fails the same way: it scores the demo instead of the product. A 3 with an empty evidence column is a salesperson's answer written down neatly. Ask to see the thing, on data that looks like yours. For data portability, ask for an actual export file before you sign anything — "you can export" and "here is your export" are not the same claim.
The columns
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| category | Workflow, Data portability, Hosting, Access, Integration, Support, Pricing or AI. |
| requirement | One testable thing. Not "good reporting". |
| why_it_matters | So the person scoring it knows what they are protecting against. |
| must_or_nice | Decide before the demo. Deciding during one is how must-haves become nice-to-haves. |
| vendor_answer | What they said. |
| evidence_seen | What you actually saw. A screen, a file, a named customer. |
| score_0_to_3 | 0 no, 1 partial, 2 yes with caveats, 3 demonstrated. |
| notes | The follow-up question you did not get to ask. |
Score us with it
The demo runs on a sample book with no signup, which makes most of these rows scoreable in about ten minutes without talking to anybody.
Related: CRM versus broker management system, sourced comparisons, all templates.