Request for Proposal

What is he on about? Request for what? Is he looking for a marriage guidance council, a dating agency? Just desperate for a relationship? Errr no! Actually non of these things. This is what my life seems to revolve around at the moment; 'Request for Proposal'.

At one time I used to be on the other side of these wonders, I used to be a supplier. Now I'm a buyer. (NO! Not drugs ... despite Amsterdam) So this is how it works - I, the buyer, know I have a gap in my ability to provide a service. I can either buy the skills and build it myself, or I can go to someone else who may have the expertise and a ready or partway ready solution and buy that instead. I really can't bothered to go into the arguments for build versus buy right now ... maybe another time. But it boils down to horses for courses - sometimes one is better than the other.

Ideally the request should be an outline of the business, and an outline of the requirements. Nicely structured so the supplier can understand what those requirements are and address each one in turn. This will take a few hours to draw up .... well, I lied ... OK, maybe days. If you think that's tedious; on the other side of the fence the supplier gets the RFP and issues their response. This takes them some tens of hours and quite heavy duty personnel commitment .... at least if they want a good chance at the work it does. I've played this game, it's at least a week of hard labour preparing a decent response. The solution proposed is always glossy, assured and bears no resembelance to reality. Areas where maybe just a day has been spent reading up suddenly become relevant expertise. It's all one big spin exercise. Finally, the response is ready - 30 pages of preamble, the detailed response to the questions and as much associated bumf as one can find on the company, it's products, personnel, commercials, references and accounts head towards the buyer. 2 truckloads later .....

The buyer takes delivery of the Responses to RFP. They will have set aside a small warehouse and assembled a team to evaluate these. This is tedious, amost as tedious as producing them. But as the buyer you will have maybe 4 or 5 of these to plough through. Don boots and start wading. Stiffle laughter as you discover that point after point has been missed or misanswered. The solution proposed bears no obvious resembelance to your problem. Vendor briefing is required to clarify requirements. RRFPs reissued in the light of new found understanding. More stuff to plough through. Brain goes into melt down and all the answers merge into one.

Finally you pick a couple or three that look viable and invite them to present their solution in more detail. And after this comes a drawn out series of commercial negotiations to agree a price and contract terms. And finally you get to pick the winner. Yippeee!!!

One slight problem. This has taken months now, the business has moved on. The problem has been worked around or just bypassed. The solution is no longer required. Damn!!!

Ah well .... there's always the next RFP just around the corner!