How to run a successful POC for communications compliance software

A proof of concept (POC) is the testing ground where a vendor’s promise is measured against your organization’s reality. While valuable, the slightest misalignment can invalidate the entire process, so it’s important to get it right from the outset.

POCs can fail for a number of reasons that often have nothing to do with the trialed solution being a bad fit. Vague success criteria, misaligned stakeholders, or underprepared end-users can all invalidate a POC, meaning the money, time, and manpower spent evaluating different vendors leaves you right where you started.

At Global Relay, we’ve conducted thousands of POCs for communication compliance solutions. Now, we’re looking back at that experience to identify where misalignment occurs and how organizations can circumnavigate those challenges to ensure insightful POCs.  

The most common reasons enterprise software POCs fail

Enterprise software POCs routinely run over timeline and under-deliver on insights. Most of the time, those failures can be attributed to process errors:

1. Success criteria are defined too loosely
2. The wrong stakeholders run the evaluation
3. End users aren’t prepared, so feedback only reflects product unfamiliarity
4. Infrastructure gaps surface mid-POC, muddying results
5. Teams evaluate passively, causing findings to be ambiguous

If any of those results are familiar, don’t fret. We break down how they occur and the best ways to prevent them below.

1. Define the problem before you design the solution

A well-designed POC should answer core questions like (but not limited to):

1. Does the solution capture communications wholly and accurately as defined by the vendor?
2. Does it capture the communications your business and risk framework specifically require?
3. Does the solution operate in practice the way you understand it to on paper?

When thinking about the goals of your POC, generate specific test conditions against which you can measure outcomes. Engineer scenarios that reflect your actual risk profile, instead of simply running business as usual sandboxes.

Global Relay works with your team during pre-POC planning to define success criteria and map your requirements to product capabilities before deployment, so there’s no ambiguity about whether the trialed solution passed or failed.

2. Get the right people involved from the beginning

Stakeholder misalignment is the single most preventable cause of a failed POC. A successful POC requires early participation along with clearly defined roles and responsibilities across all major business units:

• Compliance & legal: Defines regulatory requirements and success criteria.
• IT & infrastructure: Responsible for device readiness and Mobile Device Management (MDM) compatibility from day one.
• InfoSec: Reviews the vendor’s data handling, encryption, and access controls. They’ll want to see how those elements function in practice.
• End users: Provide meaningful feedback on usability and workflow.
• Procurement: Manages timelines and vendor communication.

When POCs stall, it’s often because one of these functions is engaged too late, or not at all. In our experience, the POC evaluations that finish on time are the ones where every function named above attends the scoping call.

Global Relay works with your project lead(s) to establish a governance framework, define workstreams, and ensure the right stakeholders are engaged at each phase. Our project managers work with your internal stakeholders to communicate with relevant teams, so the organizational burden isn’t just on you.

3. Educate your end users

End users who understand why the POC is happening are more engaged with the entire POC process. However, they still need the requisite product training to give useful feedback.

Complex enterprise solutions always require some degree of onboarding; most solutions look and operate differently from their original consumer counterparts or competitor products. An end user who hasn’t received training, or at the very least orientation, will give you feedback that conflates “unfamiliar” with “unusable.”

Global Relay provides regular training including end-user education at kick-off and regular touchpoints for additional training throughout the POC process. We work with your team to design an onboarding approach that reflects your users’ experience level and your timeline.

4. Assess infrastructure readiness before deployment

Enterprise communications infrastructure is complex, and the people evaluating a new solution are often not the same people who manage device fleets, MDM systems, or user provisioning.

Before your POC begins, your team should be able to answer:

• What is the size and composition of your mobile device footprint? Which devices are enrolled in MDM, and which aren’t?
• Are the specific devices and OS versions required for the solution already in use, or will new devices need to be provisioned?
• Do you have a defined rollout plan for end users? How will they receive the application, how will they be onboarded, and who will manage support issues?
• Has your IT team reviewed the technical deployment requirements and confirmed readiness?

A POC that surfaces an existing infrastructure gap is still a successful POC, provided you understand what you’re looking at and have a path to resolution. The risk is discovering that gap further down the line and delaying your project timeline.

Global Relay provides a deployment and implementation guide as part of the pre-POC engagement. Our team works with you to define infrastructure requirements, MDM compatibility, device provisioning, and rollout planning so you can identify readiness gaps before they impact timelines.

5. Run the evaluation with rigor

The best POCs are characterized by active evaluation: end users who explore the product, compliance teams who push against edge cases, and IT teams who probe the deployment model. Passive POCs produce ambiguous results.

Maintaining that active posture takes discipline through the entire evaluation period: hold structured check-ins at defined intervals to surface issues early, document findings in real time, and evaluate results against your original success criteria.

This discipline culminates in an honest self-assessment. Was an impairment structural or situational? Was an unexpected outcome a gap in product or pre-POC qualification?

These questions matter most for teams migrating from competitor product. Workflows and behaviors you’ve internalized as “how communications compliance works” are often vendor-specific, and an unmet assumption can be misread as a product gap when it’s really a difference in design.

Global Relay’s enterprise services team supports this discipline with structured check-ins and outcome documentation at each stage of the POC, so findings are captured in real time, and unexpected results are evaluated against your original success criteria rather than assumptions carried over from a previous vendor.

Key takeaways for a successful POC

The most effective POCs are structured, collaborative, and well-governed. Misalignment and poor planning invalidate the process before useful results can surface.

• Define success criteria and map your requirements to the solution before deployment begins
• Stakeholder misalignment is the single most preventable cause of POC failure—get compliance, IT, end users, and procurement aligned early
• Audit your device environment before the POC starts; infrastructure gaps discovered mid-evaluation compromise your results
• End-user education is critical, especially during competitor transitions, where unfamiliarity is routinely mistaken for product limitations

Organizations that run effective POCs define success before they start, engage the right stakeholders early, assess their own readiness honestly, invest in end-user preparation, and evaluate with rigor.

Now you’ve got the proof of concept down, but that’s just half the process. Crucial vendor due-diligence occurs before, during, and after the POC—all before you sign the dotted line. Read our guide on evaluating vendors for third-party risk, data storage assessments, support capabilities, and more: 4 considerations before you choose your compliance tech vendor