” And this lack of technical requirements is not out-of-the-ordinary in my experience. Let’s look at an actual example of an RFP “requirement” and the resulting questions that arise (BTW, this RFP was 35 pages long and 1 page was devoted to “requirements”. The RFP requirement listed below is actually two requirements rolled into one sentence – one for document imaging and one for workflow. There was no other elaboration in the RFP on this requirement which prompted vendors to ask questions. The first question/response is about the imaging requirements and the second is about the workflow requirements
Once this first boundary is established, it is important to interview business users for understanding the key pain points and requirements
I’m not sure what the alternative to an RFP could be but I do know that any complex purchase, such as an ECM system, needs at least the following (whether in an RFP or not): A set of business, functional, and technical requirements. Without these types of requirements defined and used to baseline the project, there is no starting point and consequently no finishing point. As a vendor I would have mixed feelings about entering a contract with no requirements or loosely/poorly defined requirements
Whether you’re capturing Business Requirements or developing a Request for Proposal, most of us add everything we can think of when asking for what we want in an application or business solution
After performing exhaustive technical requirements gathering, employee interviews, and operational observations; a comprehensive RFP was published. A group of vendors were selected to respond based on products that could match the requirements gathered in the first phase
I’ve spent a lot of time recently with my head buried in clients’ EIM/ECM/BPM software business requirements and vendor selection criteria, and it’s been fascinating in the aggregate to see when – and whether – in their RFP process the hardware side of the equation surfaces
The weren't even seriously considered because the ECRM vendor decided that pricing strategy was more important than the customer's slightly unique requirements
This does not take long, though it addresses both current and future requirements. Your organization should have these requirements already – that is, if you clarified your Current State, defined your Future State, and planned the Roadmap that will take you from the current to future state