The Request for Proposal (RFP), often following the Request for Information (RFI), has long been the key selling/buying document, depending on which way you look at things. The process would usually go something like; 1. Requirements definition 2. Vendor research 3. RFI 4. RFP 5. Vendor demonstrations 6. Contract negotiations At each step in the process, the field is narrowed from the vendors identified in step 2 to the vendor selected for contract negotiation in step 6. But is this process really still a good one – especially for smaller companies procuring CTRM software? Overkill? As we move inexorably to CTRM in the cloud for many users and away from the more costly perpetual license and on premises implementation, isn’t this process now simply overkill? I talked to a vendor sales person once who told me that an average RFP these days might take 4 man-weeks of effort to respond to. Imagine having a whole bunch of RFPs to respond to at 4 man-weeks of effort each and pretty soon you begin to wonder if it makes any sense at all any more to do things this way? Who really benefits from an unwieldy RFP process anyway? It’s not the vendors… continue reading
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