A request for proposal (RFP) is a form of reverse auction that solicits a business proposal by an organisation interested in the procurement of a service or product from potential suppliers. [1] It is usually part of a complex sales process, and made through a bidding process.[ citation needed ]
Unlike invitations to tender, which award contracts based upon the price and quality of the tender, RFPs allow suppliers more flexibility in proposing an original service or product in alignment with a company's needs.[ citation needed ]
Similar requests include a request for quotation (RFQ) and a request for information (RFI), where a customer needs more information from vendors before submitting an RFP. An RFI is typically followed by an RFP or RFQ. [2] When an RFP is made after negotiations with prospective contractors, the submitted tender is known as a BAFO (best and final offer).[ citation needed ]
A request for proposal requires the bidder to produce an original business proposal based on the buyer's needs. Depending on the RFP document's specification, a bidder may be required to decide upon project expectations, timetable, product design, and vendors. Other requested information may include basic corporate information and history, technical capability, product information.[ citation needed ]
In United States government procurement, Federal Acquisition Regulation 15.203 covers requests for proposals, stating
Requests for proposals (RFPs) are used in negotiated acquisitions to communicate Government requirements to prospective contractors and to solicit proposals. [3]
The FAR allows for evaluation of proposals, further discussions with bidders and invitation for submission of written final proposal revisions (FPRs), upon which a final selection decision is based. [4] Federal government requests for final proposal revisions must
advise offerors that the final proposal revisions shall be in writing and that the Government intends to make award without obtaining further revisions. [5]
The term "request for proposals" is sometimes used in relation to government procurement in the United Kingdom, for example a request for proposals to raise and manage the UK Government's proposed Broadband Investment Fund was issued in June 2016. [6]
The collective term RFX is often used to embrace a request for proposal (RFP), or any of the terms listed below. [7]
A business proposal is a written offer from a seller to a prospective sponsor.
A request for information (RFI) is a common business process whose purpose is to collect written information about the capabilities of various suppliers. Normally it follows a format that can be used for comparative purposes.
Purchasing is the procurement process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between organizations.
The Information Services Procurement Library (ISPL) is a best practice library for the management of Information Technology related acquisition processes. It helps both the customer and supplier organization to achieve the desired quality using the corresponded amount of time and money by providing methods and best practices for risk management, contract management, and planning. ISPL focuses on the relationship between the customer and supplier organization: It helps constructing the request for proposal, it helps constructing the contract and delivery plan according to the project situation and risks, and it helps monitoring the delivery phase. ISPL is a unique Information Technology method because where most other Information Technology methods and frameworks focus on development, ISPL focuses purely on the procurement of information services. The target audience for ISPL consists of procurement managers, acquisition managers, programme managers, contract managers, facilities managers, service level managers, and project managers in the IT area. Because of ISPL's focus on procurement it is very suitable to be used with ITIL and PRINCE2.
E-procurement is a collective term used to refer to a range of technologies which can be used to automate the internal and external processes associated with procurement, strategic sourcing and purchasing.
Complex sales, also known as Enterprise sales, can refer to a method of trading sometimes used by organizations when procuring large contracts for goods and/or services where the customer takes control of the selling process by issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) and requiring a proposal response from previously identified or interested suppliers. Complex sales involve long sales cycles with multiple decision makers. Multiple stakeholders and stakeholder groups contribute to every complex sale. These types of sales can take up to 8 to 18 months as multiple people from higher management are involved.
Strategic sourcing is the process of developing channels of supply at the lowest total cost, not just the lowest purchase price. It expands upon traditional organisational purchasing activities to embrace all activities within the procurement cycle, from specification to receipt, payment for goods and services to sourcing production lines where the labor market would increase firms' ROI. Strategic sourcing processes aim for continuous improvement and re-evaluation of the purchasing activities of an organisation.
A purchasing cooperative is a type of cooperative arrangement, often among businesses, to agree to aggregate demand to get lower prices from selected suppliers. Retailers' cooperatives are a form of purchasing cooperative. Cooperatives are often used by government agencies to reduce costs of procurement. Purchasing Cooperatives are used frequently by governmental entities, since they are required to follow laws requiring competitive bidding above certain thresholds. In the United States, counties, municipalities, schools, colleges and universities in the majority of states can sign interlocal agreements or cooperative contracts that allow them to legally use contracts that were procured by another governmental entity. The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) reported increasing use of cooperative purchasing practices in its 2016 survey of state procurement.
In the United States, the processes of government procurement enable federal, state and local government bodies in the country to acquire goods, services, and interests in real property. Contracting with the federal government or with state and local public bodies enables interested businesses to become suppliers in these markets.
In procurement technology, ERFx is an acronym for electronic request for [x], where x can be Proposal (RFP), Quotation (RFQ), Information (RFI) or Tender (RFT). Other pseudonymous acronyms include ITT and PQQ. All relate to a similar activity: a buyer requesting information from potential suppliers for the purpose of evaluation and comparison. Often this is part of a tendering exercise. The more structured this information is, the easier it is to compare the suppliers. For example, it is more effective to ask 20 multiple choice questions than it is to ask 2 essay questions, as long as suppliers have an opportunity to provide commentary to qualify their answers. Therefore, eRFX software should help the buyer to compare suppliers in useful ways – e.g., apples vs. apples.
Industrial marketing or business-to-business marketing is the marketing of goods and services by one business to another. Industrial goods are those an industry uses to produce an end product from one or more raw material. The term industrial marketing has largely been replaced by the term business-to-business marketing (B2B).
A request for quotation (RfQ) is a business process in which a company or public entity requests a quote from a supplier for the purchase of specific products or services. RfQ generally means the same thing as Call for bids (CfB) and Invitation for bid (IfB).
Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS) is a procurement process established by the United States Congress as a part of the Brooks Act and further developed as a process for public agencies to use for the selection of architectural and engineering services for public construction projects. It is a competitive contract procurement process whereby consulting firms submit qualifications to a procuring entity (owner) who evaluates and selects the most qualified firm, and then negotiates the project scope of work, schedule, budget, and consultant fee.
A tender notification is the publication and circulation of procurement opportunities by the procuring entity in various media like: Newspapers, purchasers's own website and government tender bulletin etc. The main objective of wider publicity is to make these opportunities available to a wider supplier community, increase the competition and thus making the procurement process efficient and transparent. In pre-internet era the tenders were published only in the print media but the internet has made it possible to publish the tenders online and make these opportunities available to suppliers globally, on a click of mouse. Though some countries have moved completely to online publication of tender notification, but still there are many countries which are publishing tenders in print media as well. It depends upon the commitment and preparedness of the leadership to make the public procurement efficient and corruption free. The World Bank started bench-marking economies on the basis of legal and regulatory system, which can affect the ability of the suppliers to participate in public procurement process. The latest report from The World Bank - Bench-marking Public Procurement, 2017 assesses 180 economies around the world.
A reverse auction is a type of auction in which the traditional roles of buyer and seller are reversed. Thus, there is one buyer and many potential sellers. In an ordinary auction also known as a forward auction, buyers compete to obtain goods or services by offering increasingly higher prices. In contrast, in a reverse auction, the sellers compete to obtain business from the buyer and prices will typically decrease as the sellers underbid each other.
The procurement of Landing Platform Docks (LPD) by the Indian Navy, formerly known as the "Multi-Role Support Vessel Program" (MRSV) - is an initiative of the Indian Navy (IN) to procure a series of landing platform docks, specific vessels dedicated to amphibious warfare, as part of the service's strategy to augment its capabilities of amphibious warfare, disaster-response, humanitarian assistance and auxiliary duties.
An invitation to tender is a formal, structured procedure for generating competing offers from different potential suppliers or contractors looking to obtain an award of business activity in works, supply, or service contracts, often from companies who have been previously assessed for suitability by means of a supplier questionnaire (SQ) or pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ).
A request for qualifications (RFQ) is a step sometimes used in the formal process of procuring a product or service, for example by a government agency. It is typically used as a screening step to establish a pool of vendors that are then qualified, and thus eligible to submit responses to a request for proposals (RFP). In this two-step process, the response to the RFQ will describe the company or individual's general qualifications to perform a service or supply a product but generally will not include specific details or price proposals.
RFX may refer to:
Bidder Conferences are common for major projects and programs that are intended to be performed as Cross-Corporate Project Business activities. They are used once the owners of the project have decided to buy work items from the sellers, who may be product vendors and/or service providers. A Bidder Conference reflects the project owners’ intentions that all vendors have an equal understanding of the project's requirements and the procurement processes before they submit their offers. This ensures that the bidding process is fair to all parties involved.