How to Buy
A practical guide to purchasing Coram for your school, city, or agency. Three paths, one goal: get you protected faster.
Choose Your Path
Start with the fastest option that fits your situation.
Best when:
- Your organization can use cooperative contracts
- You want to move quickly without RFP overhead
- Budget is approved and timeline is short
Best when:
- Policy requires competitive bidding
- Large deployment with custom requirements
- You want to formally compare vendors
May be valid when:
- Specific AI capabilities not available elsewhere
- Required integration with existing Coram deployment
- Unique interoperability requirements
Note: Check your organization's policies. Thresholds and documentation requirements vary.
RFP Checklist
Use this checklist to run a thorough evaluation. We're confident in how we'll score.
- Document current pain points and incident response gaps
- Inventory existing camera count, makes, models
- Identify must-have integrations (VMS, access control, SIS)
- Define retention requirements by camera/zone
- Get IT sign-off on network/bandwidth capacity
- Establish evaluation criteria and weights
- Require live demo with your cameras (not canned video)
- Request reference customers in your vertical + region
- Ask for total cost of ownership (5-year view)
- Include security/compliance questionnaire
- Specify pilot/POC terms before full commitment
- Require training and support SLA commitments
- Score demos against real scenarios (investigations, alerts)
- Call references - ask about implementation and support
- Compare TCO, not just license fees
- Validate claimed integrations with your systems
- Request a pilot with measurable success criteria
Includes integration matrix, architecture overview, pilot template, and security docs
State Cooperative Contracts
Coram is available through these pre-competed purchasing cooperatives in your state.
Need everything in one package?
Our Evaluation Kit includes integration matrix, architecture docs, pilot template, procurement checklist, and security questionnaire responses.
Procurement Working Session
Let's map out the fastest path for your organization. We'll review your requirements, identify the right cooperative contract, and build a timeline together.