Enhanced RFP Software Selection Approach

If you have to prepare one, the image below depicts the significant sections of a Request for Proposal (RFP).

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Typically, your procurement and legal department can provide you with your organization's RFP template.
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Engage procurement and legal early in your RFP process to ensure your solicitation adheres to your organization's procurement policies. They provide valuable assistance and guidance to ensure your RFP process is successful.

Walk through an RFP Deliverable

Solicitation Overview

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General contact information
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Solicitation schedule
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Solicitation overview
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Notification of vendor presolicition conference

Project Introduction

Describes critical elements of your project including:

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Objectives and purpose
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Background and context, such as information on your organization, mission, values
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Project scope
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Vendor qualifications expected
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Anticipated contract term
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Other conditions

Solicitation Terms & Conditions

Describes terms and conditions regarding the solicitation, such as:

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Solicitation process
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Handling of vendor questions
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Vendor response format, content, and submission
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Evaluation and selection process
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Selection and notification
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Post submission guidelines

General Contract and Agreement Terms and Conditions

This section represents a standard technology procurement contract used by your organization.

The intent is to set expectations on what your organization requires in an acquisition contract, such as:

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Contract terms and schedules
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Payments
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Insurance
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Compliance with legal requirements
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Termination

Special Terms and Conditions

This section includes special terms and conditions unique to your solicitation and project.

Attachments

Attachments include project content and questionnaires that vendors respond to, including:

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Your organization's technical environment and standards
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Organization and user census profiles
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Vendor company and third-party sub-contractor questionnaires
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Requirements questionnaire
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Security Questionnaire
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Vendor cost proposal workbook
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Vendor value proposition

Commercial Documents

Includes commercial-related documents, such as:

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Notice of intent to bid
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Response authorization, usually signed by a vendor executive
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Vendor certification document -- may provide certification of good standing or license to conduct business

Conduct an RFP Vendor Evaluation and Selection Process

Enhanced RFP Approach

The following map provides an overview of an enhanced RFP approach. Enhancements over most traditional approaches include:

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Adds a significant external perspective to your vendor software evaluation and selection process through research and networking with peer organizations.
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The team aligns on a detailed and structured evaluation process early in the project.
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Use minimum vendor requirements to limit the number of responses to the most viable vendors.
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Focus on the vital rather than the many trivial requirements.
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Minimize the use of knowledge intermediaries by engaging front-line users and experts.
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Increased focus on question design as a method to reduce RFP vendor response obfuscation.
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A sandbox experience to "test drive" the software.

Incorporate leading practices and unconventional thinking into your Vendor RFP and Evaluation process.

Evaluate and select a vendor solution in five steps:

Initiate
Do Your Due Diligence
Align on Evaluation Process
Publish RFP
Evaluate and Select Vendor Solution

Initiate

Confirm Funding

Confirming the availability and approval of funding for your work before starting any project is good practice, and it is a crucial step to engaging constituents and team members on your project.

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Many IT departments bill projects for the time their people spend working.
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You may not be able to engage specific teams without funding approval.

Organize and Engage Constituents

Identify, engage, and organize the right leaders and constituents early in your project.

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Establish a cross-functional project team.
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Confirm that each organization impacted by your project has representation on your team.
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Assign clear roles and responsibilities using a RACI matrix.
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Designate a subset of team members as the evaluation team, either as scorers or contributors (contributors provide their vendor assessment input to scorers).
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Keep the scoring team small -- no more than 5 to 7 scorers.
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If necessary, select a subset of the scoring team to participate in vendor site visits to minimize travel expenses.
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It's critical to keep a consistent scoring team throughout the evaluation process. The scoring team should not change during the evaluation process to ensure scoring consistency across vendors.
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If a scorer withdraws or can't participate in a scoring-related meeting, consider substituting another employee as a scorer.

The team has five primary actions:

Engage in research and peer networking to create outside-in knowledge.
Engage with front-line users, technical teams, and others to define solution requirements.
Partner with procurement and legal teams to create and publish an RFP.
Scorers: Score vendor proposals, interviews/demos, and site visits.
Contributors: Provide their input to scorers to consider a broader perspective.

Establish an Approach and Plan

Partner with business and IT leads to prepare and finalize a work plan, including:

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Key work actions
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Milestone dates
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Deliverables

Draft Evaluation Process

A vendor solution evaluation process is a series of assessments representing decision gates to narrow your options to the most viable vendor(s).

Draft a proposed evaluation process. This process will be finalized before creating the RFP.

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Define a vendor solution evaluation process that's reasonable for the scope and size of your decision.
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Define your evaluation process early in your project.
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Doing so provides a well-articulated evaluation process to include in your RFP.
Define a transparent process.

A transparent process enables leadership and team members to align on:

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The process itself.
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Critical vendor evaluation criteria, including minimum requirements expected from a vendor.
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Scoring and contributor team assignments.
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Scoring methods.

Summary

Create a thorough action plan and engage critical constituents early in your work.

Be realistic in your timeframe. Procurement and Legal departments typically have a backlog of work that may impact the progress of your initiative.

Consider RFP Timeline

A software selection process generally takes three to eight months, depending on the approach and the solution breadth.

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An RFP approach takes six to eight months, exclusive of contract negotiations, which may take another three to six months.
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A JITDE™ approach takes two to four months, inclusive of contract negotiations.

The following variables impact the actual timeframe.

Scope

The number of applications included within the scope of your selection project.

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For example, one application, such as payroll, should take less time than a suite that comprises several applications, such as human resource management, payroll, time and attendance, talent management, and learning management.

Team Availability

The availability and time commitment of your project team.

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Full-time staff resources will enable faster project delivery than part-time staff who still have regular day-to-day job responsibilities.

Administrative Rigor

The level of administrative rigor required by your procurement organization.

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For example, public-sector organizations require administrative rigor mandated by local and state statutes, which is not required in private-sector organizations.
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The number of vendor proposals received. More proposals require more time to read, score, and discuss.

Linear Progression

While you can prepare and do some pre-work for future activities and steps, the significant milestones need to progress linearly. Each major milestone is dependent on the completion of its predecessor milestone, e.g., evaluating vendor RFP responses is a prerequisite to pre-qualify the sub-set of vendors invited to interview and demo their software.

Typical RFP Milestones and Timing

Use the following general milestones as timeline benchmarks.

Note: As discussed above, unique circumstances and project size may impact timelines.

The following schedule may appear excessive. However, be realistic when planning and scheduling your project.

Consider the following variables:

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Team, leadership, and vendor availability
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Business priorities
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Other project dependencies
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Team member turnover
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Procurement, legal, finance, and IT department work backlog and priorities
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Level and intensity of business and IT engagement
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Travel schedules, e.g., booking airfare at least two weeks before travel for the best rates

Weeks 1 through 4: Complete Initiation

Plan to complete your project start-up and initiation in around four weeks. That includes:

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Engaging constituents and team members.
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Finalizing project plans.
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Completing preliminary market and vendor research.

Weeks 5 through 12: Release Request for Proposal (RFP)

RFPs are large documents that require content from many internal constituencies.

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Procurement provides a solicitation document that includes your organization's standard procurement terms and conditions. A unique template may be available for technical-related acquisitions.
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Legal may provide additional documents and terms.
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Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who represent your solutions user constituency assist with developing requirements.
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Various reviews and approvals are required before the RFP can be published.

Plan on at least two months to complete this milestone.

Weeks 13 through 16: Receive Responses

Allow vendors four weeks to respond to your RFP. Depending on the clarity of the RFP, a week or two of extensions may need to be granted to allow additional questions and answers.

Weeks 17 through 20: Evaluate Responses

Allow four weeks to evaluate vendor proposals received. It's very time-intensive to read each vendor's RFP response, understand its content, follow up on clarifications, and assign scores.

It's even more challenging to complete this milestone in four weeks if the scoring team also has their regular job duties to fulfill.

Weeks 21 through 24: Complete Vendor Interviews & Demonstrations

Vendors need adequate lead-time to schedule their team members to participate in your interview and demonstrations. That includes making travel arrangements.

Weeks 25 through 28: Complete Vendor Site Visits

Most organizations prefer to secure the best airfares at least two weeks before travel dates.

Your vendors appreciate the lead time to:

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Ensure the right senior leadership is available to participate during HQ site visit meetings.
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Prepare adequately for a visit, including appropriate content and arranging for the right team members to participate.

For cloud-related services, such as hosting, software-as-a-service, and other cloud services, plan to conduct a walk-through and assess the vendor's data center.

Weeks 29 through 30: Recommend Vendor

Prepare your final evaluation recap and vendor recommendation within two weeks of the site visit completion.

Do Your Due Diligence

Learn from external research and peer organizations, in addition to your internal problem and solution assessments, to get smarter quicker and avoid the mistakes others have made.

Align on Evaluation Process

Incorporate learnings from your due diligence into the evaluation process. Cooperate with team members, leadership, and other constituents to align on and finalize the evaluation process.

Articulate the final evaluation process in the RFP.

Publish RFP

Draft, finalize, and deliver your RFP to vendors.

Good question design increases vendor response quality and highlights clear differences between vendor capabilities.

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Design Questions
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Create RFP

Evaluate and Select Vendor Solution

An effective process winnows vendors at each evaluation stage.

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Assess Vendor Proposals
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Conduct Interviews and Software Demos
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Contact Customer References
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Engage in Sandbox Software Experience
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Conduct Site Visits
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Recommend Vendor
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Negotiate Agreement