« West Hollywood Unwires | Weblog | Vo Wi Fi for business (and your city too?) »

Best Practices RFP Tool

Greg Richardson at Civitium has seen one or two RFPs over the past year. No, we better move that number up. I'm guessing he's seen more than you can count on your fingers and toes, and to hear Greg tell it, the quality of the RFPs can range more widely than it should. While such is to be expected at this early stage of the budding municipal wireless industry, Greg and I talked about what we could do to improve the procurement process, and we came up with this paper on RFP best practices to help cities communicate better with the vendor community. Civitium put this tool together for exclusive distribution to UnwireMyCity readers. I recommend you download it today and use it as a guideline for your RFP. There are some great templates of other RFPs referenced at the end of the document.

Fact is, an RFP should not be the beginning of the purchasing process. Rather, it should reflect the many long weeks of planning and thorough, deliberate process your community has undergone to get ready for this important stage in the procurement process.

In short, an RFP is not the place for originality, nor is it the place for long-winded but vague vision statements. It is a communication document to the vendor community and if well done, it should minimize the need for questions afterwards. If it's well-written, you will get good results (and if it's not, get ready for a lengthy Q&A!) By building on the wisdom and experience of those towns and cities that have gone before you, you're increasing the odds that you'll have a satisfactory outcome in your procurement. Work smart, not hard. Learn from those who have gone before and start your RFP with this document.

Best of luck! Please let me know how it goes!

Posted on June 26, 2005 at 08:43 PM

Comments


Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.metronetiq.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/77