Domain 5: Can you afford the commitment and preserve your options?

The US banking agencies’ community-bank guide covers planning, supplier selection, contracts, monitoring and termination. It is voluntary supervisory guidance for its stated audience, not a universal GRC purchasing law or a compliance safe harbour. Its lifecycle approach informs the following buyer questions. (occ.gov)

13. Is there a credible three-year ownership model and funding route?

A — 0: We do not have a cost model or identified funding owner.

B — 1: The budget covers headline software pricing only.

C — 2: A USD model includes software, implementation, migration, integrations, internal delivery work, ongoing administration, training, support and overlap with retained systems; unknowns are visible and an approval route is named.

D — 3: Finance has reviewed scope and volume assumptions, downside scenarios and the affordability ceiling; discovery and evaluation funding are authorised, with a defined route for the final commitment.

Evidence to retain: a three-year GRC total cost of ownership worksheet, assumption register and funding decision.

Mandatory gate: score at least 2. A supplier estimate is an input, not approval of the complete business case.

14. Have procurement and legal defined the commercial questions?

A — 0: We plan to review terms after choosing the preferred supplier.

B — 1: Procurement is involved, but quote comparison focuses on subscription price.

C — 2: The comparison schedule covers user categories, modules, entities, environments, APIs, connectors, content, support, implementation deliverables, acceptance, renewal and change requests.

D — 3: Procurement and legal have approved negotiation positions, evidence requests and escalation routes; the team knows who owns unresolved technical, commercial and contractual assumptions.

Evidence to retain: commercial clarification schedule, draft statement-of-work requirements and approval matrix.

Concrete reason to check: LogicGate’s published API getting-started page states that API access requires an add-on purchase. Confirm the terms of the actual offer rather than generalising that documentation into a market-wide pricing rule. (logicgate.ai)

15. Have you checked renewal, portability and exit before committing?

A — 0: Renewal dates, source-data access or future export requirements are unknown.

B — 1: Key dates are known, but export completeness and transition effort are untested.

C — 2: The plan records notice dates, source access, required export contents, archive needs, transition responsibilities and the future supplier’s proposed exit obligations.

D — 3: A representative current-source export or archive retrieval has been checked for records, attachments, relationships and history; future supplier portability tests and an exit-cost scenario are ready for evaluation.

Evidence to retain: renewal/notice calendar, export manifest, test results and exit assumptions.

First-time buyer? Test extraction from your current spreadsheets and repositories, and define the new platform’s future export requirements. You do not need an incumbent software contract to score well.

Sources cited on this page

occ.gov ↗www.occ.gov
logicgate.ai ↗www.logicgate.ai