Managing your RFP process

April 26th, 2017

Minimize the burden and maximizing the value of complex RFPs

 

Today’s post is by Dave Wenig, Director of Sales, at SafeSourcing.

While the biggest reason that an organization sites as they begin to leverage eProcurement is to reduce costs and many first think of reverse auctions when they think of eProcurement, there are other benefits as well.

For example, when an organization is considering a complicated Request for Proposal (RFP) and want to understand much more than price alone, they often turn to their eProcurement partner for assistance. In fact, one of the more common misconceptions about eProcurement is that it does not work well for categories that are not commodities.

Actually, there are many reasons, including cost reduction to use eProcurement to better manage your RFP process for complex categories. The complexities may exist in the service requirements and might be considered difficult to quantify. They might also be in detailed technical requirements. These complexities create an even greater burden on a purchasing organization than other less complex categories.

A traditional RFP process can be cumbersome to manage internally. Beginning with the creation of the scope, requirements and other details, your team will typically have a heavy burden and are often under the additional pressure of a tight timeline. Then, once the RFP is ready the responses have to be solicited from vendors. From there, each vendor will respond, likely in varying formats and with varying levels of detail.Finally, all of these responses has to be reviewed thoroughly in order for decisions to be made. It is a substantial undertaking that will significantly tax your resources.

So then, what does eProcurement offer to address these challenges? First, you’ll have the guidance of your eProcurement partner in the creation and preparation of your online RFP. They will lighten the load for your team by taking on much of the burden associated with the process. Second, and this is a big one, your eProcurement partner will ensure that you’ll have vendor responses submitted and organized in a manner that allows for easy and efficient review and comparison of the vendor submissions including pricing. No more digging though vendor documents to align their response to your requirements. Each response is in its proper place for consideration. Third, you’ll have all of this at your fingertips electronically. Finally, you’ll continue to have support during your review process.

Dave Wenig is the Director of Sales, North America at SafeSourcing. Dave or any member of the experienced team at SafeSourcing would be happy to discuss many more reasons why our clients choose to host their RFPs online. For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.

We look forward to your comments.

 

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