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Buyer journey: evaluate RecSys in 5 minutes

A buyer-first reading order to decide whether a pilot is credible and how to procure the right license.

Who this is for

  • Product and engineering leaders evaluating RecSys as a product
  • Security/procurement stakeholders who want the “what evidence exists?” view first

What you will get

  • A short evaluation path (what to read, in order)
  • The minimum requirements for a credible pilot
  • Proof artifacts you can inspect (no calls required)
  • Links to pricing, licensing, and procurement artifacts
  1. Understand what RecSys is
  2. Stakeholder overview: What is RecSys?
  3. See the pilot plan and exit criteria
  4. Pilot plan (2–6 weeks): Pilot plan
  5. Define KPIs and guardrails: Success metrics
  6. Inspect evidence (what outputs look like)
  7. Example response, logs, and report excerpt: Evidence
  8. Confirm operational fit
  9. Known limitations (non-goals): Known limitations
  10. Rollback story: Operational reliability & rollback
  11. Baseline benchmarks: Baseline benchmarks
  12. Confirm security and data posture
  13. Security pack: Security pack
  14. Decide licensing and procurement path
  15. Buyer guide (evaluation + procurement): Buyer guide
  16. Licensing decision tree: Licensing
  17. Pricing overview (commercial plans): Pricing
  18. Self-serve path (minimum requests): Self-serve procurement

Outcomes you should expect

By the end of a credible pilot, you should be able to show:

  • At least one evaluation report comparing baseline vs candidate (plus a written ship/hold decision)
  • An evidence trail you can audit later (exposures + outcomes joined by request_id)
  • A rollback drill completed (so you trust the lever before you need it)
  • A clear “next step” recommendation (ship to staging/production, expand to more surfaces, or stop)

See the canonical checklist: Buyer guide.

Pricing and how to buy (when you are ready)

What you need for a credible pilot (minimum)

RecSys pilots fail for a predictable reason: you can’t measure impact reliably.

Minimum requirements:

  • 1 recommendation surface (for example: home feed, PDP similar-items)
  • Stable join key: request_id present in exposures and outcomes
  • Exposure logs (what was shown, with ranks)
  • Outcome logs (what the user did), joinable by request_id
  • Pseudonymous identifiers (avoid raw PII)

Canonical spec:

Proof you can inspect (no calls required)