It’s The End of RFP as We Know It

For decades, the Request for Proposal (RFP) has been the default tool for procurement. But for anyone who has had to create one—or worse, respond to one—the process is often a “disgusting,” “sloppy,” and painful exercise in futility. It’s a process that wastes time, frustrates suppliers, and often fails to identify the best partner for the job.

In the latest episode of Proc & Roll, hosts Natasha Gurevich, Conrad Smith, and Zachary Bachir declare war on the traditional RFP. They provide a passionate and practical guide for why procurement leaders must “take back control,” “change the freaking policy,” and embrace a more creative and effective approach to sourcing.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• You Are the Game Master: The hosts discuss the empowering concept that as the buyer, “you get to make the rules of the game”. Instead of defaulting to a standard RFP, procurement should act as a “game master,” creatively designing a sourcing process that is tailored to the specific outcome they need to achieve.
• Stop Being a Victim of Your Own Policy: Natasha makes a powerful call to action for leaders to stop hiding behind bad policies that mandate RFPs. She argues that since procurement often creates these rules, they have the power and the responsibility to “change the freaking policy” when it no longer serves the business.
• The “Best RFP Responder” Fallacy: A critical insight from the episode is that a traditional RFP process often leads you to select the “best RFP responder,” not necessarily the best long-term partner for the job. The skills required to answer a 500-question document are not the same skills required to be an innovative and collaborative partner.
• The 19-Supplier Problem: The hosts use a real-world example of a team that invited 19 suppliers to an RFP as a clear sign that “you have no idea what you want”. A better approach is to do upfront homework, have deep conversations with a few key players, and ask them pointed questions before ever issuing a formal request.
• Practical Alternatives That Work: The discussion is filled with alternatives to the traditional RFP. These include using creative reverse auctions for complex services like legal firm fees, breaking the rigid “seven-step” process with workshops, and using Proof of Concepts (POCs), as one company did to implement five AI tools in nine months without using any RFPs at all.

Watch now or read the transcript below.

Transcript: Proc-N-Roll | It’s The End of RFP as We Know It

Zach: Welcome to Proc and Roll. Today’s topic is RFPs. As the value procurement delivers expands beyond cost to include speed and innovation, do RFPs still have a place in the future, or do we need new ways to do sourcing? RFPs, yay or nay?

Natasha: As always, the answer is: it depends. 25 years ago, an RFP was maybe the only way to create a competitive environment, but today there are many other ways. The problem is that the procurement professionals who create RFPs never have to reply to them, so they don’t understand the pain, expense, and enormous workload on suppliers. I hope we find better, faster, more humane ways to create a competitive environment and only use RFPs when it’s an absolute must.

Conrad: I really agree with Natasha. RFPs have been built into our policies and muscle memory, and it’s disgusting. Most of the time, because people on the team are lazy, they’re cutting and pasting old RFPs together, and there’s this idea that the more complicated the RFP is, the more sophisticated the approach. It’s just sloppy, and it’s embarrassing. I made a personal commitment that if I ever go back to being a CPO, nobody on my team sends an RFP without actually completing one first so they can see what happens on the other side of the table.

Natasha: It’s interesting you talk about policies, because procurement is the one who created the policy that an RFP must be issued. If you feel that the policy you have no longer reflects the current state of the business, just change the freaking policy. Quit acting like a victim; it’s your policy. Stand up as a leader and say this is or isn’t working for us.

Conrad: A friend of mine who teaches game theory negotiation has a powerful saying: “You get to make the rules of the game”. That’s where you get your power as the buyer. You are the game master, and you need to bring the rules to the game that will best support the outcome you’re trying to accomplish.

Natasha: When I see a team that invites 19 suppliers to an RFP, it means they have no idea what they want and have not done their homework. If you as a procurement professional would meet with just three of those suppliers beforehand for a detailed conversation, you could educate yourself, ask them about their competitors, and come back to your stakeholders and say you only need to invite five. An RFP process involves the supplier making assumptions, then the buyer making assumptions about the supplier’s assumptions, when it all could have been sorted out through conversation first.

Zach: I think the rigid “seven-step sourcing process” is part of the problem. People need to feel they have the creative freedom to break that process by using workshops or giving suppliers a problem statement instead of a long list of questions.

Natasha: We had great success using a reverse auction for a category you wouldn’t typically think of: legal firm fees. We broke down the services into different blocks like intellectual property and paralegal rates, and we generated about a 15% reduction on fees, which is unheard of.

Conrad: You either reverse auction commodity-like stuff, or you commoditize what you’re buying by doing the pre-work and due diligence to get to an apples-to-apples comparison. But you can’t just auction everything, just like you can’t RFP everything; it takes you out of that innovative space where you’re the game master. The people who should be most proud are the ones who do the research, send it to the fewest suppliers, and have the most concise process, maybe blending in a Proof of Concept (POC) or pilot to have the supplier prove their claims.

Zach: I think you only really use an RFP when you don’t know what you’re buying. If you know what you’re buying, do an RFQ.

Natasha: I would challenge that. If you only buy what you’ve bought before, you’ll always buy the same thing from the same supplier, but the world has changed. The commodity is not dictated by what suppliers are selling, but by what I’m buying. If a category lead knows their space well, the request for proposal should come from the buyer to the supplier, not the other way around.

Conrad: A colleague of mine did a project for a company that was anxious to implement AI. They evaluated 14 solutions, did 10 proof of concepts, and went live with five tools in under nine months, and they didn’t use any RFPs. You’ve got to go outside of paper processes; you’ve got to put a lot more credibility into real stuff instead of the vapor that gets wrapped up into paper.

This transcript has been edited for clarity while maintaining all substantive content