Use hiring evidence to organise a purchasing decision—not to justify one. A practical sequence is:
Week 1: establish ownership and the baseline
- Name the football user, technical evaluator, budget owner and final approver.
- Record current tools, relevant entitlements, renewal dates and notice periods.
- Ask whether the staffing change is expansion, replacement, temporary cover or reorganisation.
- Identify the recruitment question that currently remains unanswered.
Week 2: define a bounded comparison
- Select an authorised player or match sample.
- Document what the current stack already answers.
- Set must-pass coverage, integration and intended-use requirements.
- Reserve evaluator time rather than assuming the incoming employee can absorb it.
Week 3: test evidence and implementation
- Give suppliers identical questions and deadlines.
- Record additional supported findings, unresolved gaps and staff effort.
- Test the hand-off into the actual report, database or decision meeting.
- Keep promised features separate from demonstrated capability.
Week 4: make the decision
Produce a short retain, add, replace, consolidate, build or buy-nothing brief. Show verified capabilities, unresolved exceptions, cash costs, internal effort and who will own recurring use. Do not claim improved player performance or transfer returns from a software trial.
Bottom line: the most useful hiring signal is a specific responsibility becoming accountable to a named function. The purchase should still depend on whether the supplier adds evidence that the club can lawfully access, practically use and distinguish from what it already has.