Introduction
So you have a new RFP from a large prospect that has a potential to be worth millions of dollars and getting ready to respond. The technical team, proposal team and reviewers have decided on the 1st meeting to chalk out the plan of action. The first thing that the RFP team should focus on is thoroughly reading the RFP document. If I can take a bit of liberty here, it is sometimes okay to omit the standard rules and regulations that are simply put in the RFP to fulfill organization rules. This is all the more acceptable if you have worked on the same client’s RFP before. Now starts the important steps of actually working on the RFP response. I have listed down the steps which are applicable for any large RFP response and should help to complete the work within a reasonable time.
STEP 1: Read, understanding and asking the questions
This is the first step and helps us to ask the right questions to the client organization. Sometimes, it is written in the RFP document that they may not answer all questions if the questions asked are not relevant. So understanding and putting the right questions helps to clarify many doubts and makes the response to the RFP much easier. Please note that once the question window closes you may not have the opportunity to ask queries. The queries are generally asked by the Subject Matter experts or technical team members as well as the proposal team.
STEP 2: Create the RFP response checklist with well defined dates,
responsibilities and flagging delay (Red/Amber/Green) options
The response checklist will have a list of all the key activities that are required to complete the response. Against each of these activities, there should be a person assigned the responsibility of the work and a deadline. There should be a comment column that should mark the latest status of the project and a flag to quickly identify the status of the response by marking it Green, Amber or Red.
STEP 3: Map the requirements to the latest product version or design
the solution if it is a new development
This step starts the process of responding to the RFP. In case of responding to a software product RFP, there will be multiple line items covering the functional and technical parameters of the product. There are 4 available options that are provided for the response. The first option is “Available” means the requirements are completely mapped to the existing product, the second option is “Configuration” meaning the product can be configured to meet the requirements, the third option is “Customization” wherein the requirement can be fulfilled by developing the new feature and finally if the requirement cannot be fulfilled, it is marked as NA (Not Available).
Incase it is a solution development from the beginning, the RFP response should highlight the solution or service that needs to be designed by a joint effort of the PreSales Team that should include a Business Analyst and the Technical Team member.
STEP 4: Finish the General information sections
The General information section is time consuming but there are several areas such as the company profile, Quality Management Section, experience, local market presence etc that are already available in the repository. It can be simply copied and pasted but with the modifications required. All these sections are very important and should be checked very thoroughly before sending the response. The responses are completed by the PreSales team.
This section should include key points like USP’s, provide evidence that you’re the best choice (clients, similar projects, experience in technology, etc.) which should make your proposal stand out from the others.
STEP 5: Complete the Commercials
This is again a very important section of the RFP response process. In case of a product response, it will include the license fee, or usage fee if it is on cloud hosted model, the configuration effort cost and the customization cost.
If it is a solution development, then the commercial should include the development costs and any infrastructure and software tools that the client needs to procure.
It should also include the Annual Maintenance charges and any taxes applicable. The “Terms and Conditions” are an important part of the commercial section. You need to clearly state what is included and what is not in the commercials as any missteps can lead to lot of heartburn later if everything is not mentioned in black and white.
STEP 6: Consolidate the RFP document
Once all the respective sections are completed, now comes the important point of consolidating the different sections, structuring the RFP well so that all sections are in sync and as per the format required by the client. It is the responsibility of the Proposal Manager to ensure key points like the solution description, security, infrastructure, company details, USP’s, Management, proposed team members are all covered in the proposal.
The proposal manager should ensure that all points from the checklist are covered before handing over the proposal to the designer who will do a final formatting of the document.
STEP 7: Complete all quality checks
The Proposal Manager should run the proposal with the Delivery Team leader whose team has responded to the RFP as well as the PreSales team Head to ensure that final RFP is in expectation of the sales team and the client. The final RFP document should also be run past the sales owner who may also want to add their inputs to the RFP. Once the final quality checks are completed, the RFP is ready to be shipped.
STEP 8: Ship the completed document
The completed document should be shipped to the sales team atleast 2 business days before the actual submission of the RFP. It will help the sales team to make any minor changes, take printouts (if the submission needs to be done in a hard format) and make the submission in time.
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