When to write a RFP.
- RFP stands for Request for proposal. It is written when goods or services are required from an outside supplier where no products or expertise are currently available to meet the needs of the project within the company.
Benefits of a RFP.
- An RFP specifies the needs and allows other companies to bid for the work. Their responses are then evaluated against success criteria to enable the best solution to be chosen.
General guidelines
- Establish who needs to be involved with the content of the RFP. For example is a Procurement representative needed.
- Use generic terms that can be understood by external vendors.
- Set the scene.
- Be clear on what services are required.
- Be clear on what is expected in a response and when.
Key considerations for RFP process
- Strategy for identifying vendors to distribute the RFP.
- RFP Covering letter.
- RFP.
- RFP questions to vendors.
- Evaluation process.
- Evaluation scoring.
Each consideration is taken in turn below to provide additional detail.
Strategy for identifying vendors to distribute the RFP
There is a need to establish what vendors might be interested and are capable of bidding for the work required. The types of companies that provide the technologies or expertise need to be identified followed by a short list of the ones to send the RFP to. Reviewing each vendor proposal is time intensive so there a need to focus on the companies that are most likely to meet your requirements. A strategy should be established on how to select these. It may mean talking informally to some of the companies pre RFP to understand what they deliver, appetite for bidding or for their recommendations of other partners.
RFP Covering letter
The general structure of the covering letter to accompany the RFP should provide the following types of details:
- Introduction about the company that vendors are responding to. This will then give them a chance to state their experience with your type of company in addition to giving them an overview.
- A summary of the Services or products that your company requires.
- Background of the project to set the scene. Again it will also help to establish whether the vendor has delivered similar projects like this before.
- Proposal to set out how the vendor needs to respond, the process and who to contact for queries or questions.
- Timeline of when proposals are required and the keys activities and dates.
RFP
The general structure of the RFP should provide the following types of details:
- Overview of key requirements.
- Details of the requirements e.g. infrastructure, hosting, functional, non-functional etc.
- Timescales for the project.
See article Gathering Non Functional requirements and who to involve (Part 2) for examples of non-functional requirement categories.
RFP questions to vendors
You may have a list of questions that need a response from vendors to help ascertain the best supplier. Below is a list of the types of categories to ask questions about. This will vary depending upon the types of services or products required.
- Project methodology.
- Project approach.
- Solution proposal against requirements.
- Technical.
- Support.
- People.
- Security.
- Commercial costs.
- Commercial terms and conditions.
When asking for responses to each of the questions in these categories you may also want the vendor to specify whether they fully meet, partially meet or cannot meet each one.
Evaluation process
As part of the evaluation process set up an evaluation committee and set out the following:
- Who needs to be involved with the scoring.
- What is required of the team members.
- The process that needs to be followed.
- The outputs as a result.
The objectives of the committee will be to:
- Develop defined RFP scoring guidelines.
- Conduct individual evaluations of each vendor proposal.
- Participate in group scoring to either reach a consensus or average the scores for each vendor proposal.
- Either make a decision or deliver a recommendation paper for which vendor should be selected.
As part of the process a decision needs to be made as to whether to invite the vendors or a short list of them following the proposal responses to provide presentations.
Evaluation scoring
There are a few options around whether to score the individual questions, group the answers together such as in the categories given to the questions above and whether to include additional criteria that can be gleaned from reading the proposals or from the presentations. These may be more subjective but are very important when assessing how easy the vendor will be to work with and the compatible fit with your organisation.
Examples are:
- Quality of the responses / presentations.
- Confidence in the vendor to deliver.
- Whether the vendor has understood what is required.
It is common to give each criteria a weighting to reflect the areas that are most important.
The main objective of the scoring is to evidence the rationale behind the vendor selected to demonstrate why they are the best solution. A common problem is that the RFP or evaluation team may believe that one particular vendor is the best solution but they can’t evidence the reasons to other senior stakeholders or decision makers unless they have the scoring criteria to back the recommendation up.
Thoughts? Questions? Please share in the comments.
