I’m engaged in a bidding war with my classmates for a corporate eLearning contract. Managing Information Learning Technology (the class) is a structured role-play centered on a Request for Proposal (RFP). The fictional client, a health care company (HCC), needs help creating an ethics course for their employees. Our team has created our own fictional consulting company (ALS). The initial phase of the RFP consists of reading through the company’s RFP proposal and submitting questions for clarification. HCC’s written solicitation for RFPs was a bit vague. A question session has been established. As a team we have come up with a format to use and questions to submit to HCC. LG had a co-worker who provided the template our group will use, along with the questions we prepared. I found the template very helpful. It provided clearly written document for the company to respond to. Having such a template is one way of showing HCC (or another company) that you, as a bidder, will be clear in your communications, provide structure and accountability. The template was also helpful to me because it was a very concrete document with specifics broken down. For example, it contained the job titles of people who might work on such a project, request for objectives to be clearly stated, etc….
My biggest surprise thus far is learning that it is common practice for a company soliciting RFPs to collect all questions and respond to all questions before the next round in the process. Previously, I assumed a company would use the questions as a measure of the consultants bidding. For example, if the consultants asked no questions, why go further with them. However, I see now that this was a short sighted hypothesis. A company could waste a lot of time responding questions individually. A more efficient use of company time is to get all questions and respond to them all at once, in an addendum format. Ah…. the things we learn! More in the upcoming battle reports!
