What is an RFP? What is an RFI? When should I use each?
An RFP (or Request for Proposal) is a document that outlines your project needs for prospective vendors with enough specificity that they can respond with a proposal and bid on your project. The more detail you provide, the more specific and accurate your vendors can be in their responses.
RFPs are most valuable for projects in which the scope of the project is very well known, and you can therefore request bids from a number of vendors to compare their specific approaches, teams, and budgets.
An RFI (or Request for Information) is a document that outlines your informational needs in order to consider potential vendors. Vendors are not expected to respond with a bid per se, but rather to give you important information to help you evaluate their suitability as a partner on your project. You can follow up with more detailed quotes and bids when the scope of the project has been explored further.
RFIs are better suited to projects where the scope of the project is not yet very clearly defined. With an RFI, you will compare vendors' skill sets, teams, general approaches, and possibly their rate structure, but they will not be asked to provide a specific bid for the project.
What are some common pitfalls in using RFPs and RFIs?
Many clients make the error of sending out RFPs and requesting quotes from a wide range of vendors before their project needs are well established. As a result, vendors may have different interpretations of the scope of the project or the functional complexity of the project, and may provide bids that are very hard to compare. In addition, if the scope of the project is nebulous, a responsible vendor will respond with a conservative, safe budget, given their understanding of your needs. The best vendors under-promise and over-deliver; they do not want to set unachievable expectations about project scope and will tend to be conservative until they better understand your needs.
To use an analogy, if you sent out a request to car vendors for a "really fast, stylish car" without specifying what that meant, Ferrari might respond with a quote for a top of the line performance vehicle, while BMW might respond with a Mini Cooper. There are significant differences in the features, values, intended use, and benefits of these two vehicles. You might get quotes from the two vendors and inaccurately conclude that Ferrari wasn't a good value. An RFI allows you to find out if your vendor builds Mini Coopers or Ferraris, or both.
Unless you have a very clear outline of your requirements (approximate number of pages, key site functionality with details on how each feature should behave), Pop Art recommends that you send out an RFI. Find out if your vendors make Ferraris, Mini Coopers, or Trucks, and match the vendors effectively to the solution you need.
RFIs give your vendor the freedom to respond with their qualifications for the project, in terms of project experience, project leadership, creative ideas, and process, as well as some insight into their preferred contract types and cost structures. RFIs carry significantly less risk that you will reach inaccurate conclusions about their work based on price. Once you have identified one or several vendors who are a good fit, you can move on to defining scope in order to get accurate bids.
Simple RFI Outline
- Introduction
- Your company
- " What is your mission and vision?
- What products or services do you sell?
- Who is the audience for your product?
- What is your competitive landscape and how are you positioned?
- Your point of contact
- Name, role, and contact information for the lead evaluating RFIs
- Your team
- Identify the names, roles, and titles of any key staff members who will be project sponsors, stakeholders, or future administrators of the project
- Are there any other vendors involved with the project? What are their roles?
- Your project
- Why are you issuing this RFI? What is the project?
- Response requirements
- By what date do you expect responses?
- How should responses be delivered and to whom?
- How will you make your selection?
- What is the process and timeline for selection?
- Do you have a concrete budget constraint? (If you do, and can alert vendors in advance, they can respond with a solution that is appropriate given the constraints of your budget. This will in no way prevent you from selecting a vendor who offers you a good value for the work.)
- What are your selection criteria for reviewing responses?
- Goals
- What are your major business goals as they relate to this project?
- What are your goals for the project?
- Can you give some examples of tests for success? (To continue with our Ferrari analogy, 0 to 50 in 5.6 seconds.)
- Audience / Customers
- Who are your customers? Why do they work with you?
- What are your challenges in converting new customers?
- Who are the administrative users in your company? Who will manage the web site, what are their skill levels and needs? What types of changes might be regular vs. infrequent?
- Design
- How do you 'speak' to your customers? What do you already know about what the tone of the web site, visually and verbally, should be? (This will allow your vendors to respond with sample projects that best map to your needs.)
- How should the site feel? Are there branding guidelines for your company yet? How established are your brand and design standards? (This will help your vendor understand the scope of services you need.)
- If this is a redesign effort, how extensive do you expect the redesign to be? Will the branding, look and feel, navigation, site architecture, and user interface of your site change?
- How much content will be integrated into your site? If possible, build a matrix of types of content and identify whether the content already exists, needs editing, or needs to be created from scratch. Identify your suggested role for your vendor in developing content.
- Functionality
- Are there key features or tools that you already anticipate or need for your users? If so, list them. Are you looking for your vendor to propose new tools and functions to serve your customers and administrative users?
- Are there existing features or tools that you want to preserve or update? Describe them, if possible.
- Why are changes required? What do you hope to achieve?
- Do you have any existing / legacy systems or technical requirements?
- Do you have any in house technical experts or developers who will be responsible for developing or extending certain features?
Pop Art would be very happy to help you develop your RFI or RFP, or to talk with you about your plans for an interactive marketing project. Please feel free to call or email us at info@popart.com |