How to Write an RFP

Try to provide as much detail as you can, putting yourself in the position of somebody who is being exposed to your needs for the first time. The more you can tell a potential vendor here, the less likely it is that you will receive proposals from unqualified vendors.

Section 6: Detailed Requests for Information, Pricing, and Proposals; or Detailed Requirements
In this final section, you will make your actual requests for proposals, pricing, and descriptions of how a vendor might provide a solution. In this section, the respondents will differentiate themselves from one another; it is where they try to sell themselves to you. Be sure to request general information about the vendor—their corporate background, core competencies, and market differentiators; key management; sources of financing; or any other information you desire about the company itself. Because you are going to be choosing a vendor with whom you and your team will be working with for an extended period of time, these factors are oftent just as important as the company’s ability to meet the technical requirements of your request.

Second, ask that the vendor submit a description of their proposed solution and the pricing structure behind it. If you want any particular options priced separately, call those items out to guarantee that the vendor prices them individually in their proposal.

Finally, include detailed requests for information. Again, this takes the form of a list of requirements, but these are typically questions designed to elicit free-form answers from the respondents. Some examples range from "Propose a solution for synchronization of data between X and Y systems," to "Describe your strategy for network redundancy," or "What is your standard Service Level Agreement (SLA)?" The level of detail in the vendors’ responses will vary drastically based on the kind of proposal you seek. If you are seeking bespoke engineering services, then you can expect significant detail about the proposed solution. If you are choosing a vendor for a more commoditized service, such as an internet service provider, you can expect a lot of boilerplate language and most differentiation around price.

Sample RFP
An example of a typical Request for Proposal follows on page 92. While it is a Request for Proposal for an internet video player, the particular details of the project aren’t necessarily as important as the way the sample follows the format guidelines discussed in this article. RFPs for significantly different services can be put together with only minor variations on the six sections oultined here.

Because the sample RFP is for a software engineering project, it is more focused on presenting requirements than would be, say, an RFP for collocation or storage services, which—since those services are essentially commodities—would focus more on requesting information and pricing from the various vendors you’re soliciting.