How Do You Write A Good RFP? Part V: Software

As per the many series we have written on this over the years, this is often the hardest RFP to write, because it’s really hard to specify what you need when you don’t understand software, what’s on the market, what it can do, and when it can’t. Especially when you’re inundated daily with marketing about why you need SoftwareSpectacle Version Seven with the latest and greatest self-sealing AI technology to solve all of your function X business processing needs. And then vendor Y comes along with Binary BitBlaster Release Bravo with the new and improved board-based AI-backed BI technology that will do even better!

As we’ve said again and again in our many series on technology selection and RFPs, which include:

Unless you are a tech expert, you can’t truly know what you want. We’re at the point that even most analysts, especially those who work at the big firms and who need to spend at least half of their time on client advisory to justify their positions, don’t even know half of what’s out there (as evidenced by the maps they publish year after year with the same 20-ish vendors when, in some areas, there are over 100 providers, as can be attested by the Source-to-Pay Mega Map).

As with services, the only way to get close to what you want is to focus on specifying what the software has to do, who it has to do it for, what outputs are required, what systems it needs to integrate with, where it fits in the ecosystem, and how the affected individuals are expecting it to make their job better. The vendors really need to define the specifics of how the software will accomplish its tasks and how they will deliver it to do that.

Keep that it mind, along with the best practices we outlined in Part I, and you’re well on your way to writing a good Tech RFP, as long as you steer clear of the “Free RFPs” (as there is no such thing as a FREE RFP). For more best practice advice and insight, see the prior series.

This concludes our initial series on how do you write a good RFP. Hopefully you found it useful.