Creating Winning RFP's

Source: Technology Digital

Date :25/09/2007 10:35:22

The first step in finding a vendor that will help you succeed in a new endeavor or critical project is to craft a Request for Proposal that separates the best from the rest.

By Michael Wilkes

The ultimate goal of issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) is to acquire one great product from one great company.

To compose a really great RFP, you will need to spend extensive time specifying the requirements, identifying supplier criteria, setting a budget and defining the implementation — what you expect to see happen, by when, and by whom.

There are potential pitfalls, however, between your first thoughts and the final contract award. A poorly executed RFP process can:

• Break down internally

• Be ignored by the best suppliers

• Swamp you with information

• Distract you with inappropriate sales calls

• Damage your reputation in the marketplace

Building a wish list and tossing it into the wind is a great way to waste your time, your money, and ruin morale. The ideal RFP will produce

3 to 5 enthusiastic responses from qualified suppliers. This is what you want and what your business needs.

How do you make sure this is what happens?

Start slowly.

Treat the RFP as a project and gear up for it like you would any other project that affects your company. Here are some essential pre-RFP

activities:

Identify the need and perform a cursory initial study.

Estimate how long the RFP process itself will take and what resources you will need.

Write the project justification statement and get that approved.

With the project charter established and confirmed by management, identify a team of people that will be involved and clearly appoint a leader that will serve as the coordinator.

You need buy-in across the organization, so be sure to balance your team

with:

User Buyers – focus on ease of use, productivity

Technical Buyers – focus on implementation, maintenance, stability, standards Financial Buyers – focus on ROI, TCO Is this a customer-facing solution?

If so, don’t forget to include customers in the interviews.

Do you know enough about the available options to set a budget range and suggested schedule? If not, you are not ready for an RFP. Consider a Request for Information (RFI) step as a precursor to the actual RFP.

Gather Requirements

In Request for Proposal, (Addison-Wesley, 2002), Bud Porter-Roth notes that, “The negative effects of poorly written requirements cannot be overemphasized.”

What do good requirements look like? A good requirement is:

• Unambiguous

• Realistic

• Clearly mandatory or clearly optional

• Measurable

• Meaningful

• Not overly restrictive (limiting solutions) Requirements examples include:

The most common signs of poorly written requirements are:

• Lots of questions from potential suppliers

• Inflated prices (to cover unknown contingencies) Now for the kicker, and the difference between an average and an excellent RFP process: objective evaluation.

The RFP itself must include the criteria by which each supplier will be evaluated. Some points to consider include: Is tenure important? D&B rating? Number of installations?

The scoring matrix that will be used to rate each vendor is an essential tool in avoiding the “shiny object syndrome.” We fall victim to this syndrome when we buy from the prettiest salesperson, the most articulate speaker, or the product that has the coolest user interface.

Objective criteria — developed in advance — help us avoid this mistake.

Communicating the criteria to potential suppliers in the RFP helps them prepare, self-eliminate if they don’t fit the bill, and say to themselves, “This is a professional buyer. I want to help this company.”

What might cause this otherwise valuable supplier to ignore your RFP?

Here are some factors:

• Requirements are not well researched

• Team is not well educated on the subject

• Proposal will drain their resources

• Proposal appears unlikely to go to contract How do you avoid these pitfalls?

First, acknowledge that a good RFP is a project in itself that requires a plan for success.

Next, find an experienced requirements analyst (internal or external) who will interview your stakeholders to gather the core requirements.

These people know how to facilitate meetings, ask thorough questions, organize the content, and communicate it effectively to internal and external parties. The more industry experience they have, the better, but do not use anyone with close ties to the solutions you are evaluating! They cannot be objective.

Once Elvis and the RFP have left the building, you’re ready to start planning for the second wave of your effort: evaluating the responses.

(Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part column. In part two, Micheal Wilkes will discuss how to:

• Answer Vendor questions – fairly

• Check Vendor References

• Conduct Demonstrations

• Score Presentations – objectively

• Get the Best Price

• Award the Contract

Michael Wilkes is founder and president of Dynamic Answers, Inc., a software development firm focusing on the creation of database-driven applications. Visit the company at www.dynamicanswers.com