An interesting post on Simon Coles’ ELN Blog paints a dark picture of the RFP process. If we’re brutally honest, then the post doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know, but weren’t prepared to admit. There seem to be two underlying themes around the points raised; firstly, to what extent are we prepared to be flexible with the requirements themselves, and secondly how willing are we to participate in a collaborative approach with the vendor in achieving a successful outcome.
I can well remember witnessing projects where (a) the objective was to faithfully reproduce a paper process on a computer, and (b) there was no give and take over a specific requirement. In the first case, the project was a total failure; it reproduced fundamental flaws in the paper process and never took advantage of the capabilities of the technology. In the second case, the only way out was some very clunky customisation that was unable to survive the next software release. Clearly there are some things that we as human beings are very good at, and there are other things that computers are very good at. There’s still a way to go before these qualities are fully merged, so the more we can do to adapt to the logical capabilities of a system, rather than expect the system to adapt to our occasional illogical capabilities, the more likely we are to find a successful solution. Now that’s not to say we just give in to whatever is presented to us in the way of a computerised system, but we do need to be confident that we have a robust and logical process that we can apply the technology to.
In terms of a collaborative approach with vendors over RFPs, the issue may bear resemblance to Game Theory and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The basic scenario is competitive, from a financial perspective, and communication, is to some extent, driven by the passing of a document (RFP) between the two parties. In this context, achieving a win-win isn’t going to be easy.
Unfortunately the RFP process is never going to be completely open and collaborative, but that’s not to say that it cannot get better. Like many aspects of business life, standardisation, and a one-size-fits-all approach tend to eliminate the flexibility that is needed to drive good outcomes.
