Why the RFP Just Won’t go Away?
I was looking through our archives today for an idea to write about and came across an article from 2014 called RIP RFP? The idea behind the blog was that as CTRM moved to the cloud, perhaps the RFP might no longer be needed and instead selection could be fast tracked a bit? As I wrote in March 2014…..
So what’s the alternatives?
Perhaps the best way to select software is by actually seeing a demonstration and getting hands on. In the cloud solutions (and even if you are leaning towards on premises, traditional, your vendor almost certainly has an in the cloud variant) can be made available, on trial, in minutes, so wouldn’t a short trial be a better approach? Perhaps this puts the emphasis back on those reluctant end users but it’s their system so by forcing them to get involved in a hands on manner as opposed to talking requirements with a consultant, perhaps you reduce the risk of a bad decision? There is still a good role for the consultants too.
AdvertisingAdvertisingPlainly, you still have to understand the solution landscape and narrow that down to a manageable number of demonstrations, which in turn can result in a trial (or two). But that’s easily done. In fact, we’ve worked with a number of buyers to do just that – leveraging our deep understanding and constant review of the vendors in the market, we been able to quickly (within a week or two) identify the best fit pool of vendors that can address the high-level (and meaningful) requirements of our clients. This short, sharp and low cost approach accelerates the selection process, quickly separating the wheat for the chaff and allowing the buyers to concentrate their efforts on a deep review of only a very small handful of solutions; not spend a week or more reading through a very tall stack of responses to an overly complex RFP.
However, this article isn’t meant to be a commercial for our services but rather a long overdue eulogy for the RFP as the buying document of choice!
Reading this I had to smile as earlier this week, I had made almost exactly the same point in a blog about Pioneer just about 6-years later. In that blog, I had also referenced an entire CTRMRadio podcast we had done on the same topic in 2018.
Subsequently, I have talked to other vendors in the space and raised the topic of sales cycle length and heard much the same thing – that sales cycles remain long (2-years is often quoted) and expensive. In a later blog, I spoke with Igloo and they told me exactly the same thing. So, were we wrong then and overly enthusiastic about the demise of the RFP? I’m sorry to say, it does appear so.
Having said that, there are of course good reasons. The main one is that public companies have to demonstrate proper due diligence and that they engaged in a competitive bid and so on. These processes are often run by a procurement department that still often seems stuck in the past and even if some improvements have been made, the need for oversight and competition demands the age old RFI/RFP approach. I suspect that there may also (sorry guys!) be some influence on the procurement process from consulting firms who actually quite like the RFI/RFP process for a variety of reasons although I do hope that they too are looking at how to streamline these processes in 2020. Then, there is just the need to run a documented process and the RFI/RFP delivers lots of paper that can be pointed to as evidence behind a subsequent decision. There are probably more reasons – email me with opinions and ideas please and I will do a piece that includes those thoughts.
Despite all of that. We were not totally off. We do see a few smaller entities going straight into trials in the cloud and we certainly see vendors offering this as an addition to the old procurement process that surely adds value to it? I suspect that it will simply take more time to get into a new procurement mindset but I do believe the possibility to be more efficient and spend less money on these decisions is now extremely possible.
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