Why your RFPs are a waste of time

By Morgan Markwood, Procurement Advisory Consultant, Corcentric

The nine most terrifying words in business are: “I am from Procurement, and I’m here to help.”

Busy professionals who have carefully researched and identified solutions fall into despair when they hear the news. They know that the inescapable bureaucracy of the procurement organization has come to delay their choice for the sake of “spend under management” and “fair competition.”

Procurement and sourcing professionals get a bad reputation from stakeholders for impeding progress, particularly when the stakeholders believe they have already chosen the provider they’d like to award their business. This reputation, however, is not the fault of stakeholders but of procurement professionals. Too many of our colleagues have become simple taskmasters who force stakeholders to plug-and-chug generic RFPs, adhere to arbitrary timelines, and check off requirements.

Let’s look at why your RFPs are simply a waste of time, and how you might change that notion:

1. Stakeholders aren’t bought into your process

Most people have no idea what Procurement does or, if they do, only know it has something to do with red tape and rules. Do not expect your stakeholders to have an innate notion of why they need to work with Procurement, aside from company policy dictating that they are required to collaborate with you. Take time to properly introduce your responsibilities and purpose to your stakeholders and, most importantly, understand their situation and challenges. Building a relationship with your stakeholders and showing them that you are genuinely interested in helping them solve their problems is going to rightfully earn their trust. If you take the time to identify your stakeholders’ needs and concerns, you will then be able to fully articulate your team’s value in the process. Do not let your stakeholders believe that you are just the bureaucratic function standing between them and suppliers.

2. You don’t think critically about the scope provided by the stakeholders

One of the most exciting aspects of procurement is constantly being exposed to various business functions. As exciting as this is, this can also mean procurement has to continually learn an overwhelming amount of novel information. Our fight-or-flight response is often to just let the stakeholders own the subject matter details while sourcing handles the tactical operations of the event. This decision, while easy, will not yield positive outcomes. While sourcing professionals do not need to be technical experts in what they are sourcing, they need to understand the scope of a project well enough to intelligently design the RFP in a way that will obtain the key information needed for a clear award decision. Do not just ask the stakeholder to write the scope for the RFP; use your consultative mindset to ask questions to better understand the key aspects of the scope. Otherwise, suppliers will be able to perceive your lack of knowledge in both the RFP and in your conversations with them; this will cause them to take you less seriously.

3. You don’t call your prospective bidders during the vetting process

Calling the suppliers on your preliminary bid list allows you to confirm their ability to satisfy initial scope and their interest in participating. Oftentimes, companies only list a generic email address (e.g., “info@xcompany”) on their website, and submitting an RFP to those types of emails causes poor response rates. Calling will get your inquiry in front of the right personnel faster and provide your team with the exact person that the RFP should be shared with. A simple phone call also helps increase responsiveness as it builds a personal relationship that an email alone just cannot establish. Yes, some of us have phone anxiety, but folks are much more inclined to respond to an RFP invitation from someone they’ve already interacted with.

4. Clear instructions aren’t provided to bidders

It might seem reasonable to provide vague instructions to bidders; after all, why should we hold their hands?  They need to put in the work to prove that they deserve our stakeholder’s business!

Unfortunately, doing so not only confuses suppliers but it makes your job more difficult later in the process. When bidding suppliers are given vague instructions on the qualitative and quantitative aspects of their deliverables, their proposals will land at all ends of the quality spectrum. You’ll be spending precious time trying to understand proposals and making clarification calls instead of making decisions. This makes it a nightmare for procurement and stakeholders to efficiently validate, analyze, and compare proposals.

If you want quality proposals from your bidding suppliers, make sure they are provided with clear, well-crafted instructions that allow you and your team to focus on choosing the final award, not on comprehending their scattered responses.

5. You don’t customize the RFP deliverables to align with the scope

Many procurement professionals can fall into the trap of focusing too much on “checking the boxes” when it comes to developing RFPs. We want to make sure our stakeholders are prepared to obtain NDAs and affirm timelines with suppliers, but thought is often not put into the actual deliverables requested of the suppliers. When you are ordering custom-spec industrial-grade electrical components, don’t just ask for the “5-page proposal” and “3 references to similar engagements” that your organization’s template lists. Create deliverables that ask for exactly what you and your stakeholders need from suppliers to make a clear decision. Saving time on the front end of the project by using generic deliverables will double the amount of time you spend reviewing proposals.

Are you ready to transform your sourcing process using these best practices and more? Corcentric’s Advisory team has decades of sourcing experience and is ready to help support your sourcing needs.