One of my job functions is to help respond to the many RFx’s we receive. In any given quarter we may respond to a multitude of requests for information, proposals, quotes, etc. These requests come in many forms and it dawned on me that many people don’t know exactly how to ask and what to ask for when they send out a Mobility RFx. I’m no expert but I’ll give you some guidance (that you can feel free to ignore).

Back in school we would often be asked (ordered would be more accurate) to do homework. Since we were all good little students and we feared our teachers and parents we did as we were told. Typically we submitted our homework in a format that was acceptable to our teachers and if we followed this process we lived long and fruitful lives (or at least we didn’t get a woopin for this particular issue). Since I went to Catholic school I had the additional threat of annoying the nuns, priests and God so fear was a huge motivator. I wouldn’t have thought to submit my homework written in crayon on the back of a napkin so why do we often get asked to write a small novel describing our product offerings?

Recently we have received some RFx’s that are only a few sentences written in a Word doc. ‘Describe your product offerings, deployment models and pricing.’ That’s it. That’s all you get. No more detail required. So, in response, you will get an excerpt from War and Peace, guaranteed. There is so little detail in that request that you couldn’t be more vague if you tried.

I’m not trying to be mean spirited, I’m just trying to make a point. If the nuns had made the same request we would have asked clarifying questions out of fear that we would deliver the wrong content and deal with their wrath. Clarity insures a better chance for success (and it also limits the annoyance factor of you wasting your time reading a novel that doesn’t give you what you need).

When you set out to ask for information you should probably make sure you can easily review and compare the answers from the respondents. I’m sure this is why half of the poetry review assignments I ever did came back with ‘you missed the point’ written on them. If each kid can write whatever the heck they want and there is no structure you will have to read each line of each response until you are ready to give up. That makes it hard to compare responses and makes it even harder to make an informed and correct decision on the best vendors or offerings.

Write Your RFx Right

Tony Rizzo’s Mobile Observatory often talks about developing long term strategies and avoiding short term fixes – that mindset is the correct one to establish. How do you then develop that mindset into an actual strategy and plan? The right RFx of course. That is the crux of this post.

There are plenty of consultants out there that can guide you toward the right path for your RFx (for a price) but here’s some free advice: Put your questions in a table or spreadsheet! Once you have the question set in some table form you can then set each response side by side and easily compare the various answers. Does vendor #1 offer a wider variety of choices? Does vendor #2 have a deeper knowledge of the integration requirement? Does vendor #3 have half a clue since this answer is gibberish? Etc.

The hard work should be on the vendors to respond, and not on you reviewing paragraphs of information. What is possibly worse than that? 27 PowerPoint presentations that start with ‘We were founded in 1637, during the peak of the agrarian era and quickly established our fiefdom and expertise in mobility in the hill country…’

Some suggestions for categories of questions are as follows:

• Company history and experience in our field – Asks them to give real world examples of customers similar to you in their response
• Technology – Focus on the vendors experience with your type of back end systems and integration requirements as well as what the vendor offers now and their roadmap for the future. As I’ve mentioned before, if this is the first of many mobile projects, you must select a vendor that offers a mobility platform and not just builds you a one-off application
• Security – Ask for specific details on how the vendor will keep your data safe and secure and what happens when a device is lost or stolen or a field worker is terminated to secure your data and applications
• Professional Services Methodology – What is the methodology the vendor uses to deliver a project and what is required of you as part of that process
• Support, Transition and Handoff – What happens once you are deployed and what is the process to support you and for you to take over the future of your platform and applications? Is there an enablement program that is documented

These are just a few of the high-level categories that you should ask your vendors to address. You may have some specific s that apply to you that need special attention (government regulations, compliance and policy adherence come to mind) that would require some tailored questions. Look to your internal teams to provide content for each category and then compile it all in a document that makes it easy for you to quickly assess the responses.

A PowerPoint presentation attached to the response that covers the basics about the vendor or their various offerings is fine but a well designed spreadsheet sure makes it easier to compare answers without having to do a poetry reading and interpret what the author was trying to say to you.  But what do I know?

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Tags: Brian Philbin, Business Case, Business Mobility, Enterprise Mobility, Mobile Futures Today, Mobility - General, RFP, RFx