Including us. If a vendor cannot answer the second one, the rest do not matter.
A savings percentage is meaningless without a fixed comparison basis. If the vendor defines the baseline, defines the method, and can revise either once the result is in, the percentage is a narrative rather than a measurement. Ask to see the baseline pinned before the pilot starts.
This is the question that separates assurance from marketing. If the answer is “the same system, but we wouldn't alter it,” you are being offered trust where a control belongs. The correct answer describes a second component, in a different trust domain, that the first component cannot impersonate — and explains what physically prevents it.
Records that require the vendor's cooperation to check are not evidence; they are a service. Ask whether verification runs offline, on your hardware, with no network call, after the contract ends and after the vendor is gone.
A control that reports one undifferentiated failure gets ignored within a quarter. Your team needs to know whether an alert means “fix the deployment” or “investigate the number.”
The answer reveals whether the vendor's evidence is selected. Ask for it in writing before the pilot, not after the number exists.
Participation in an open public process is not endorsement. No agency, standards body, consortium or company listed here endorses Atom Works™, its products or its claims.