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 Whether you’re a business owner or employee in charge of RFP evaluations and you have a Request for Proposal that has been issued from a potential or current client company or a government agency, then, first, you have a bid/no bid decision to make.
Before making this decision you should carefully read the RFP in its entirety. If any information is unclear, then, usually, the RFP will give information on how to and with whom to communicate. Make a list of all the contradictions, missing elements, inexplicable jargon, and unclear statements that you need to raise questions about at a bidder’s conference or email to the contact person.
Guidelines are usually in place concerning people who can be contacted, and the methods of communications. Frequently these days, communication is by email only and the questions and answers are sent to everyone who received the RFP.
When you have all the information you need, especially on the scope of work, put the information into four categories: Administrative/ logistical/contact information; Legal clauses and specifications that will govern the contract; Requirements for solution development, scope of work, technical expertise, etc.; Format guidelines.
Once you have a thorough understanding of the RFP, you can determine the answers to the following questions:
What is the real purpose of the RFP?
What is the scope and magnitude of the requirements?
What confidence do you have that you or your organization can fulfill all the requirements?
Determining the purpose of the buyer and the strength of your competition might indicate that winning the contract would not be in the best interest of your business. You want to focus any efforts as time consuming as writing a proposal on only RFPs which present opportunities for quality contracts.
RFPs generally have one of the following purposes:
To be open and follow a detailed investigation to the point of contract,
To investigate the market, with perhaps no immediate intention of contracting (really an RFI),
To write around or validate a competitors offerings, or
To open a bid prepared so the responses can be evaluated by a professional external adviser for decision making.
Some RFP’s are clearly understandable documents while others are poorly written and difficult to understand in terms of the actual requirements and scope. For example, an RFP might go out for a one-hour training video. What are the real requirements you are being asked to fulfill? Do they want you to just film an existing training session as it is being presented, so all you are doing is shooting the film and doing a little editing? Do they want you to work on the development of the training, the scripting, filming high-quality with full crew, edit, add animations or interactive exercises, and do they want it connected to a Learning Management System?
You must make sure that you understand the true scope of the requirements before you make your decision to put in the effort of writing a proposal. Start work on a requirements checklist at this time, and continue updating through the communications and bidders’ meeting. For now, this checklist will give you the scope and magnitude of the project. When your proposal is complete, the checklist can be used to verify that you have covered all the requirements and did not miss anything in calculating your costs.
After you understand the scope and magnitude of the requirements, you may find that winning the contract might not be cost productive. Do you have the capabilities (staff, resources, and finances) to fulfill the requirements, or would you need to take into account sub-contractors, new equipment, additional inventory, or even a loan for upfront expenses? Would you need to form an alliance with a competitor or complimentary company to fulfill all the requirments?
If two or more companies or sub-contractors are involved, then the process of preparing the proposal becomes more complex; exactly what items of fulfillment each of the companies or sub-contractors will be responsible for must be addressed.
At this point, you will have determined whether or not the purpose of the RFP is valid, know the scope and magnitude of what you would be bidding on, and have determined whether you could fulfill the requirements. Now you only have to answer one question: Is this job worth the time and effort required to write an excellent proposal?
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Vickie Adair is the senior technical writer at Media A-Team ( http://www.mediaateam.com) and also publishes as a freelance writer. |
