What I meant was, as an IT person, those are the questions I think would ask of a potential vendor. Users would know what they want, but they tend to only look at the interface, what they will actually interact with. I hear salespeople and people who are passing on marketing info say that the behind the scenes stuff is easy. That may be, but I would like the opportunity to evaulate that myself if I'm the one who will be asked to do that easy stuff.

Sometimes the quality of the answer is all I need to hear. As you say, the creator of the system should know how the programs work. If I ask, and they wave their hands and highlight a couple hot features but avoid the details, that's a bad sign.