There are various reasons for sharing the evaluation workload among multiple parties. An absolutely essential prerequisite for sharing the workload in the evaluation process is clear and precise requirements.

There are two approaches, which can be pursued in combination:

• Assigning RFP Response creation tasks to multiple parties

• Assigning RFP Response assessment tasks to multiple parties

All involved parties must share a common understanding of the meaning of requirements. Therefore, requirements must be clear and precise and be expressed in measurable and observable terms. If this is not the case, there is a real danger that the results of an evaluation are rendered worthless. For example, if you compared products at the criterion level (e.g. „Installation“), it would certainly be more than questionable whether everybody has the same understanding of what „installation“ really encompasses.

Assigning RFP Response creation tasks to multiple parties

Why would you want to distribute RFP Response creation among multiple parties? Consider the following scenario: You have an existing solution that was developed in-house. Then, there are two open source products that may suit your requirements. Finally, there are a couple of commercial software products. You want to find out how your in-house solution compares to other products.

You may want to have each software vendor create an RFP Response. A consulting firm could be contracted to create RFP Responses for the open source products. An in-house team would be tasked with the creation of an RFP Response for the internal solution.

Once all RFP Responses have been created, you effectively have ratings of how well products meet the requirements.

Assigning RFP Response assessment tasks to multiple parties

In the same fashion as outlined above, you can assign the assessment of RFP Responses to multiple parties. However, you would only include RFP Responses in your Evaluation Project that have the potential to make it onto the final shortlist.

RFP Response assessment lets you overrule ratings. For example, if you feel that a vendor's requirement fulfillment statement is a bit „optimistic“, you will want to overrule it with a realistic one.

Of course, you are free to assign RFP Response assessment tasks at your discretion. For example, you may wish to assign the assessment of vendor-created RFP Responses to internal evaluation teams.

Conclusion

Clear and precise requirements are indispensable when it comes to sharing the workload in the evaluation process. With adequate workload distribution, you can significantly speed up the evaluation process by parallelizing some tasks.