Request for Proposals Explained

Request For Proposals Explained

A request for proposal is a solicitation often made through a bidding process by a company or agency interested in acquiring a service, commodity or an asset from a Supplier. This document is intended to provoke potential Supplier’s to submit proposals for the supply of the requested items. An RFP is normally submitted in the early stages of the procurement cycle either at the procurement or at the preliminary study stage and dictates the preliminary requirements for the service or commodity being requested and may also prescribe, to some extent, the exact format and structure the supplier should respond to the request.

Effective request for proposals will typically reflect the plan and long/short term objectives of the business; providing a detailed insight through which the supplier is able to offer a corresponding reply to the request. This form of request is quite similar to a Request For Information (RFI) and a Request For Quotation (RFQ).

Principally, a request for proposals will:
•    Inform the supplier that the organization is looking to purchase services or goods from them and encourages them to (more…)

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How to Improve your RFP – Part 4

Part 4 of 4 on Improving your RFP

Yes, there are plenty of challenges when generating a RFP and the objective of this series is on how you can improve your document  and how can we make this task easier for you as a Buyer?

I wish there was an easy answer, however, with the exception of hiring a third party professional there is no easy way around this. Yes, you can hire someone to create or write your RFP’s! Sign me up right, as I for one am not a big fan of writing them from scratch which is why we started offering our forms to Buyer’s and Supplier’s that have similar sentiments.

First, few companies have the desire or the budget to hire third party professionals and second when you outsource it does defeats the purpose of developing your role as a Purchasing Professional.  And last, your boss might ask what you were hired for…not good!

  1. You can improve your RFP’s simply by improving your (more…)

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Buyer Bits – Freight

vinny02Negotiating aka haggling does come easier for some people. For example, my parents are from Europe and although I was born and raised in North America, my family was comfortable negotiating on both major and minor purchases.  This was part of their upbringing and they are more accustomed to this form of trade or commerce. As a result of having witnessed this growing up they managed to instill these traits in all their children.

Looking back, after over 30 years in the Materials Management field, I have come to realize becoming a Purchasing Agent had much to do with my upbringing.  My parents used every opportunity to expose their children to real life financial transactions and nurtured the importance of achieving the best possible product at the best possible price. To be honest, for our family, negotiating an acceptable unit price on a major expenditure was a necessity.

One of these real life transactions — my Father had me actively involved in the negotiation of my first major purchase. An automobile and at the tender age of 16. Yes I had a car, which I bought and paid for with my own hard earned cash!

Watching my Father grind the Car Salesman sitting on the other side of the desk was an experience or life lesson I will never forget. On one side you have an eager yet scared Buyer (me cause I had to make car payments), on the other side is the wily sales manager. Representing the eager buyer was (more…)

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