Purchasing Power – RFP Request For Proposal
The Request For Proposal or RFP is a far more detailed document than RFIs for the purchasing team. Buyers will have shortlisted via an RFI which vendors are interested in what you need. Now you need to lay down the rules and requirements for the bidding process of your tender.
Inclusions for the Proposal
- Purpose – you need to be clear and concise on what you want to achieve with your project or requirement. This will cover the full scope.
- A bit of background about your company or business. Context on what sort of business the buying team are engaged with will help the vendor.
- Purchasing teams should explain the scope of the actual work or requirements, so a purchaser should give an ideal of when you need your product by and key dates.
- What you expect as an outcome and the kind of performance or quality expected.
- Terms and conditions of the proposal
- Payment methods, incentives for the vendor if applicable and penalties if deliverables not made by them to the timeframe.
- Contractual terms and conditions
- It’s important that everyone is presenting their proposals in the same style, so this should be set as well.
- How you will select a successful vendor or vendors and what sort of process that will take
- A schedule of the overall process
- Contacts that the vendor can speak to in case of any questions.
Purchasing Power – RFP Request For Proposal
Moving forward
At this stage it’s important to lay down all the conditions of a successful bid or proposal for a project. What you need to avoid is further negotiation if you award a bid to a successful vendor. Include penalties for changes to any part of the agreement so that you avoid additional work later on.
You should also ensure that there is an agreement in terms of any warranty arrangements if required. Setting the boundaries on these issues at this stage will also weed out those suppliers willing to lose business on this.
This is not limited, you can add more details to your Request for Proposal, RFP, but these are the sort of key details you should look at.
You may also consider sending out RFQs – Request for Quotations.
See also Request for Information (RFI).
