How to Write an Effective RFI to Evaluate Your Potential IT Suppliers?
How to Write an Effective RFI to Evaluate Your Potential IT Suppliers?
What to include in an RFI to ensure you are provided with all the necessary details to best evaluate your potential IT suppliers? A well-written Request for Information (RFI) will help you make the process of evaluating your potential software development partners time and cost efficient and will help you ensure that what they offer is aligned with the needs of your business.
So how do you use an RFI to check whether your potential software development partner has what it takes to successfully deliver your project? What should be included in it, to make sure that you are provided with all the necessary information? In the following text we will answer these questions.
But first things first – what is an RFI and why is it so important?
Request for Information (RFI) is a standard business procedure used to gather information about skills and capabilities of potential suppliers and to compare them in order to make an informed decision.
It is usually a replicable 3-to-5-page document that provides an executive summary of what is to be outsourced, along with details on each vendor’s specific capabilities.
There are some good practices that you can follow when preparing an RFI, such as providing relevant information about your business, asking precise questions or stating your needs clearly at the very beginning. It is also important to gather information in a formal and structured manner that will enable easy comparisons.
As you can see, preparing a good RFI is not an easy process, which is why we’ve browsed through dozens of RFIs we’ve received over the years from our clients to come up with a list of areas a well-written RFI should cover.
We’ve also conducted a thorough analysis of our client’s requests and, on that basis, included questions to ask in an RFI which we believe are crucial if you want to properly assess capabilities, experience and maturity of your potential software development partners.
