How Can RFP Templates Help?
What is the most common complaint about the archaic RFP business process? Time. It takes time to research a category market (even if you have deep domain expertise). It takes time to develop the statement of work, a problem that is compounded if you need to coordinate a committee of people in writing the RFP. […]
How Can Procurement Partner with the Business?
The promise of digital transformation of the RFP process (and procurement, generally) is not the use of technology for its own sake. It is the opportunity to change the business process, and with it the role of the procurement department, within the organization. It is the chance to move from a narrow focus on cost […]
Social Justice and Procurement
Teaming refers to an agreement between two companies to work together in bidding for business, often with a government buyer.
What Is a Good Procurement User Experience?
Dark data is probably one of the most relevant concepts today that people don’t discuss enough.
How Should Buyers Deal with Small Suppliers?
One of the key problems enterprise buyers have is that they do not have enough of the right suppliers submitting bids in response to their Requests for Proposal.
What Is Supplier’s Risk in Procurement?
Fraudsters impersonated the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Railway Retirement Board to steal hundreds of thousands of […]
Why Is the Request of Information Bad?
The cool kids use an expression, “RFx”, to cover three different types of solicitation: a Request-for-Proposal (RFP), a Request-for-Information (RFI), and a Request-for-Quotation (RFQ).
How Does the RFP Distort Outcomes?
There are all kinds of companies in the marketplace today. Which ones are likely to survive and thrive for the longer term? As an investor, isn’t this the fundamental question to ask before all others? Darwin wrote that “… if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the […]
How Do Suppliers Develop Capacity?
When it comes to winning RFPs, small and medium-sized businesses are caught in a Catch-22. Let’s assume that our scrappy company happens to figure out that a buyer is in the marketplace for a solution that we offer. Let’s assume that our crack sales team gets a hold of the RFP, either by getting onto […]
What Can Procurement Learn from Financial Markets?
When I talk to people with experience in financial markets about the RFP process, they shake their heads at the primitive nature of it all. They are accustomed to speed, transparency, and efficiency. The New York Stock Exchange alone traded $169 billion daily in 2013. Global equity markets trade trillions in dollar value annually. […]