The Situation

Whilst hired to work on other work streams for a newly acquired firm I was asked to kick-off and manage an overdue 3-system (Finance, Learning, HR) replacement RFP and selection process from ~28 vendors, and with a tight deadline!

The Task

I was asked to take a list of pre-selected vendors, issue an RFP and requirements and arrange demonstrations with them for scoring.

I decided to add a few extra formal steps and some governance to ensure a fair and proper process.

We did not have a tender or PMO office to assist, nor inhouse skills aside from my own.

The Action / Approach

• Collated the list of requested vendors to include and researched others in the market that should be included.
• Researched templates and approaches to save time (why re-invent the wheel when time is precious?!)
• Built a list of vendors and contacted all in 45 mins to ask if they wanted to be included in the RFP (by phone and by email/webform if they could not be reached).
• Created communications, engagement rules, schedule, timeline etc.
• I then created and ran the RFP, including demonstrations with each business team and scoring.

The Result

  • We had invited a seen a representational and balanced list of vendors and had seen many (~13) demonstrations, and had validated and balanced scoring for them all.
  • The company was able to quickly decide upon the chosen vendor, having confidence that they had seen a wide selection of qualified vendors who had sufficiently answered the RFP questions and scenarios set and meet the many deadlines of the new owners.
  • The process was very time and resource efficient