Migrating to a new ATS is an important decision for every company, and choosing the right partner to support the project can matter just as much to how smoothly it goes. Once SmartRecruiters becomes the recommended path, we regularly observe a tendency to build a shortlist of three or four implementation firms. That initial selection carries more weight than most clients expect, because the RFP, the demos, and the proposal comparison that follow tend to test the firms already on that early list rather than widen the field. We've seen clients get partway into a project before realising there were questions they wish they'd asked at the shortlist stage.
Most shortlists get built on the wrong signal: who answered the emails fastest, or who the vendor's partner manager or sales executive happened to mention.
Quick disclosure. Udder is one of the firms you'd be scoring against this. We've built the version of this scorecard we'd want a client to walk in with, not the version that flatters us.
By the time an RFP response lands, you're comparing documents written by whoever's best at writing proposals. That's a real skill, but it's not the same skill as running your migration.
If the goal is to compare partners rather than proposal-writers, that scoring needs to happen well before the brief goes out. Here are four things worth checking at that stage
Ask every firm on your shortlist one direct question: is this fixed-cost or time-and-materials, and why.
Firms that quote time-and-materials will often explain that every migration is different and that they need the flexibility to respond to what they uncover along the way. That's sometimes a fair point. It's also worth noticing that it's the answer that leaves scope-creep risk sitting with you rather than with them.
Fixed-cost firms have priced the unknowns into the number, which means they've actually done the discovery work to know where the unknowns are. If a firm quotes fixed-cost without being able to walk you through what they inventoried to get there, the number is a guess wearing a commitment.
Ask them to show you the inventory they'd run before pricing, not after signing.
Most proposals are scoped to end at go-live. Ask directly: who's accountable for the platform in week 2, when the first configuration question comes in and your internal admin doesn't know the answer yet.
Some firms have a real answer: a named handover process, a support tier, a documented list of what your team owns versus what they own. Some firms go quiet, because their model is to build, invoice, and move to the next client.
Neither model is wrong on its own. But you want to know which one you're buying before you sign, not in week 3 of go-live when nobody's picking up the phone.
The full SF-to-SR migration is still a new pattern. Most firms pitching you have done many SuccessFactors Recruiting implementations and they might (or might not) have done a few SmartRecruiters implementations. Only a few are actively working on migration projects at the moment, or on fresh implementations of SmartRecruiters for an existing SAP client.
That's not disqualifying. It's just something to ask about directly instead of letting "we're a SmartRecruiters partner" and "we know SuccessFactors" blur into "we've done this migration."
Ask for a reference client who is actually in that process or recently just finished it, and ask that reference two things: what got re-scoped mid-project, and what they'd tell the next client to inventory before signing. The answers tell you more about the firm than any case study slide.
Score each shortlist candidate 0 to 2 on each line before the RFP goes out. Anything below 5 total doesn't make the shortlist, whatever the sales conversation felt like.
This list is not meant to be exhaustive. Nor is it meant to replace the comparison you'll do once RFPs land and proposals are on the table, a stage we've covered separately elsewhere. What it's meant to do is give the shortlist stage some real substance, so it's built on something more solid than a gut feeling.
Getting the shortlist wrong costs you three or four proposal cycles of wasted time before anyone notices the real issue: the firms bidding were never actually comparable. Getting it right costs you a morning with this scorecard.
The 90 days after signing get all the attention, but the morning before you send the RFP is where the project actually gets decided.
Building your shortlist now?
Udder is a SmartRecruiters implementation partner, so we'd score on this list too, and we're glad to be measured against it. If you want a second pair of eyes on your shortlist or the brief you're about to send, that's the conversation to have before the RFP goes out, not after.