How IT Heads at FMCG Companies Should Evaluate Field Sales Software
Last month I sat on a call with an IT director at a large distributor in Riyadh. He'd been handed a shortlist of four field sales apps by his commercial team and told to "just approve one." No security questionnaire. No architecture review. No talk of how it'd sit alongside their SAP box.
He was, understandably, annoyed.
And honestly, I don't blame him. Most field sales software gets bought by sales ops or the commercial director, then dumped on IT to integrate, secure, and support for the next 5 years. By the time IT gets involved, the contract's signed and the vendor's already dropped the word "seamlessly" in three emails.
So this post is for the IT heads. The people who actually have to keep this thing running at 2am when a rep in Sharjah can't log in. Here's the checklist I'd want if I were sitting in your chair.
The technical questions most sales teams forget to ask
Start with the boring stuff. It matters more than the demo does.
Where does the data actually live? In FMCG, especially across Saudi, UAE, and increasingly Oman, data residency is becoming a real conversation. Ask the vendor point-blank: which cloud provider, which region, and can they pin your tenant to a specific one. If they hesitate or say "we're on AWS globally," push harder. For KSA clients we've had to explicitly commit to the Bahrain or Riyadh region. Not every vendor can do that.
How is data encrypted? At rest and in transit. TLS 1.2 minimum, AES-256 for storage. Basic stuff. But ask if backups are also encrypted. That's where I've seen vendors get lazy.
Authentication. Does it support SSO via SAML or OIDC? Can you enforce MFA on admin accounts? Does it integrate with your Azure AD or Google Workspace? If your reps are still typing passwords into a mobile app in 2025, something's off. At Zivni we ship SSO on the enterprise tier because the third time an IT head asked us for it in one week, I got the message.
Audit logs. Who logged in, who changed what, who exported the customer list at 11pm on a Thursday. If the vendor can't show you an audit trail during the demo, that's your answer.
APIs, integration, and the SAP question
This is where most SFA platform technical evaluation exercises fall apart. The vendor says "yes we integrate with SAP." You sign. Six months later you find out "integrate" meant a nightly CSV drop over SFTP.
Here's what to ask instead:
- Is there a documented REST API? Can I read the docs before signing anything?
- Are there rate limits, and what are they?
- Webhooks for real-time events (order created, visit completed, attendance marked)?
- Is there a sandbox environment, or am I testing in production like it's 2011?
- Bulk endpoints for the initial data load — because pushing 40,000 outlets one-by-one through a REST call is a bad time
For ERP specifically, ask about the pattern. Middleware like Mulesoft or Boomi? Direct SAP RFC/BAPI calls? A pre-built connector? At Zivni we've integrated with SAP ECC, S/4HANA, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, and a handful of custom in-house ERPs from Karachi to Manchester. Every single one was different. Any vendor claiming "plug and play SAP integration" is either lying or hasn't done it enough times to know better.
Also — and this is a big one for FMCG software IT requirements — ask about master data ownership. Where do SKUs live? Where do prices come from? Where does the customer master sit? You want the ERP to be the source of truth for pricing and products, and the field sales app to sync down. Not the other way around. Get this wrong and you'll spend the next year reconciling.
Offline, mobile, and the real-world stuff
Field reps work in basements of supermarkets, warehouses with no signal, and villages two hours outside of Muscat. If the app dies without connectivity, the whole thing's useless.
Ask the vendor:
- What exactly works offline? Order taking? Photo capture? Attendance? Route completion?
- How does conflict resolution work when two reps sync the same customer edit?
- How large is the local database allowed to get before the app slows down?
- What's the sync mechanism — delta sync or full refresh?
And get a test device in your hand. Not a demo video. Load it, take it into the underground parking of your office, complete a full outlet visit, walk back up, and watch it sync. If it choked, you have your answer.
Mobile OS support matters too. Android is dominant in field sales across Pakistan and the GCC (we see roughly 87% Android across our own base), but there's always that one regional manager on an iPhone. Make sure both are truly supported, not "iOS coming next quarter."
Battery consumption is the sleeper issue. GPS-tracked attendance and beat tracking will drain a phone. Ask the vendor what their average battery draw looks like over an 8-hour shift. If they don't know, they haven't optimized it.
The vendor itself
A quick field sales software evaluation checklist for the company, not just the product:
- SOC 2 or ISO 27001? If not, what's their roadmap?
- What's their uptime SLA and how's it measured? (95% sounds fine until you calculate it's 18 days of downtime a year.)
- Where's their support team based and what hours do they cover? A vendor in California supporting reps in Jeddah is going to have a rough time on Sunday mornings.
- How do they handle data export if you leave? Can you get your data out in a usable format, or is it hostage?
- How often do they push updates, and can you control when mobile app updates roll out to your fleet?
That last one bites people. You don't want a forced update rolling out to 800 reps on the morning of month-end closing.
One more thing I'd add, and this is opinion, not checklist: talk to two of their existing customers. Not the reference the vendor picks. Ask on LinkedIn. Find someone using the product in a similar market and just ask them what breaks. I used to think this was overkill. Then I lost a deal to a competitor whose customer told the prospect exactly the opposite of what the sales rep had promised — and the prospect thanked me for suggesting the call anyway.
What would you add to this list?