REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL – RFP
Request for Proposal abbreviated as RFP is a vital aspect of a standard business postulate. Most business in modern days invite suppliers and service providers to join a bidding process to purchase specific service(s) or product(s). The days of writing traditional letters to request for prices of products and service are long gone – giving way to the RFP. With more creative ideas and time-based experience the system has been improved a lot to make it more transcendental.
So what’s in it for you … you as the purchaser have often wondered and felt that it is a plaything that vendors bother about, if you ask … the answer is Everything. A good RFP can help you identify the right vendor for you, determine the strengths and skills and ideas of the service provider and most certainly can help in determining and fixing down your budgetary expectations and time of completion. However, if that is the advantages and merits, it should also be said that it does have some disadvantages like any other. Creating a good RFP is not necessarily child’s play, and can incur a good cost. For a larger project spanning over 2-3 months and more, it could be worthwhile to dedicate a full time person to identify the requirements, ideas, pros and cons. So Why Do We Need to Do It? Here is a easy reason – not doing it can lead up to spending more than you initially wanted to , get tangled in messy emails and phone interactions with your provider, jumping around multiple vendors for doing multiple tasks, end up dedicating more time to a smaller job and the list can go on and on !!
Here in comes the advantage of reading though this blog entry ? We have given the topic of Creation of a good RFP some thought for our customers and partners and also done some amount of research work on Google and Yahoo. This led us to finalize some basic points which are a must for any good Request for Proposals (RFP) and they are:
- Project Summary
- Objectives and Goals
- Scope of Work with earmarked functionalities
- Service Provider Information ( Contact Numbers, Emails, References )
- Budget ( Design and Development , Expenses , Promotions)
- Schedule ( Connected to goals , maintenance , expedition )
- Evaluation Criteria ( If Any)
