Supply Chain Management
Complex Procurements
by
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Objective
This Chapter contains the rationale for the contents of the RFP. Chapter 9 contains a script or template of the actual language of an RFP.
By now, you should be anxious to get the Request For Proposal (RFP) out the door. You feel it is your final action item, and all the rest is left to the vendor. Not so. We need to visualize where the RFP will take us.
How will your management measure success? By RFPs? By proposals from vendors? Hardly. Management will measure success by the results achieved: a working system, meeting requirements, delivered on-time, and within the established budget. Intermediate milestones are of value for tracking progress, but they are not what management expects.
You’ve identified qualified vendors. Now you have to find the best vendor to complete the project. The Request for Proposal is the first step in preparing for the selection and management of the vendor through project completion. That is possible only if you can organize the RFP in a way that allows it to happen.
Considered in another light, the RFP is your opportunity to exercise nearly complete control and leverage over the vendor. If you structure the RFP and the proposal responses carefully, you will be able to control your vendor throughout the implementation phase. Control, in this context, means active, not passive, monitoring, review and management of the vendor, just like you do with employees. All too many firms hire an implementer and abdicate this management responsibility.
The RFP is your best opportunity to exercise maximum control and leverage over a vendor.
It is also important to think of the RFP as a package of documents, and not a single document. A package is a grouping of documents linked to each other because of a unifying theme. The unifying theme for the RFP package is to organize the vendors so you will receive proposals that enable you to compare one vendor with another with the most convenience to yourself, not the maximum inconvenience. It seems to us that the time spent in realizing this objective is worthwhile.
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About the Book
If you are the project leader on a complex procurement, this book does five things for you: 1) It helps you write requirements for complex procurements that reflect what you really want to buy; 2) It helps you prepare an RFP and receive proposals that you can evaluate in an apples-to-apples comparison among bidders; 3) It helps you quantify those comparisons so that the recommended decision will not be overturned; 4) It helps you negotiate the pricing and the contract terms and conditions; 5) It paves the way for successful project completion. If you are the head of Procurement or the Chief Technology Officer, this book gives you the policy, process, and philosophy for orchestrating every complex procurement in a standardized way to achieve consistent procurement and project success. The approach taken is consistent, reproducible, and scaleable from procurements of a few hundred thousand to hundreds of millions of dollars. Adopt this process within your organization and you will save countless hours of "wheel re-invention", challenged procurements, and millions of dollars in unsuccessful projects using vendors.
About the Author
Mikulski has an extensive career in large complex procurements. As an aerospace project manager, vise president with Chase for international systems and telecommunications and as an independent consultant to industry and government, he has conducted many vendor evaluations and contract negotiations for his firm and for clients. This book (and its predecessor) took eighteen years (part-time) to write, with some chapters re-written over ten times to ensure practicality, consistency, and accuracy. The book reflects his direct experiences. Florian honed his procurement skills by eliminating the "$200 toilet seat" type of proposal, negotiating telecom contracts with incumbent monopolies in 50 countries for Chase, and helping clients get procurements approved under strong political pressure and appeals - as in the State of Michigan mobile radio system procurement (Chapter 14). He has made presentations at national symposia and has published on a variety of topics in technical and business publications. His Ph.D. was in Chemistry from Princeton University with a B.S. from Canisius College.