Software for physical operations is judged by whether the number on the screen matches what is on the shelf, in the bay, or at the gate. That is a harder test than it sounds, and it is where these systems diverge.
**Does stock move, or is it edited?** Every change in quantity should be a movement with a reason, a document and a person attached — receipt, issue, transfer, adjustment, return. If quantities can simply be typed over, the audit trail is a fiction and the valuation drifts. Ask what happens to the ledger when stock is written off.
**Is it genuinely multi-location?** Multi-warehouse means stock is held per location, transfers are a tracked movement with a sending and receiving step, and reorder thresholds are per location. One global quantity with a location field is not the same thing.
**Does a reported fault become a tracked job?** A work order needs an owner, a due date, a priority, a status that reflects reality, and a record of what was done. Then ask the harder question: does a fault reported against an asset carry that asset's history — warranty, condition, service record — or does the engineer arrive without it?
**What drives the preventive schedule?** Planned maintenance should be generated from the asset register on a cycle, not remembered. The point of the register is that nothing falls off it.
**For fleet: are compliance dates enforced or merely stored?** Vehicle documents, servicing intervals and driver licensing all expire. A system that stores an expiry date is a filing cabinet; a system that warns you before it passes, and can stop an assignment after it has, is a control.
**For sites and gates: can you answer "who is here right now"?** Pre-registration, check-in and check-out, per-gate configuration, and a record you can search after the fact. This is the question that gets asked exactly once, under pressure, usually after an incident.
**Does any of it reach the ledger?** Consumption, wastage, fuel, maintenance spend and stock valuation are financial facts. If they live only in the operational system, somebody is re-keying them monthly, and the two sets of numbers will disagree.