A structured way to compare tools and avoid costly surprises after purchase.
Coverage and data access
Ask for a list of UK sources and how often the index updates. Verify that the sources include regional press, trade publications, and broadcast transcripts where needed.
Make sure you can export data in a format your team can use without manual cleanup.
Alert quality and controls
Test the alerting rules against real queries. Look for false positives and false negatives, and measure how often the system misclassifies topics.
A good platform offers strong filters, exclusions, and rule based routing to different teams.
Reporting and measurement
Check that reporting supports your PR measurement framework and can deliver the outputs your stakeholders expect. Avoid platforms that lock metrics behind opaque scoring methods.
If the platform supports benchmarking, confirm that you can define and change your competitor set without a support ticket.