PR RFP Technology Has Come of Age and You Need To Be Using it

A friend shared with me the apocryphal story of the daughter who asks her mother, “Why do you slice the ham at both ends?” The mother responds, “Because that’s how my mother showed me to cut it.” The daughter then goes to her grandmother and asks the same question and receives the same answer. 

The point? There are things we do in life out of habit. Rarely do we stop and think why, or question if there is a better way. So, when new ways of doing something come along, more often than not we are slow on the take-up. Habits die hard. 

Whether it was the great grandmother whose children liked the crust removed or because soot from a wood fire needed to be cut off, nothing is done without reason or context that shapes these decisions.      

And, so it goes with RFPs. There are good reasons for clients to use RFPs to select and hire agencies, professionals, and services providers. RFPs provide clients the ability to compare agency capabilities, approaches, and costs before making a hiring decision that may involve spending hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars. In addition to providing an efficient path to choosing between competing firms, a documented process enables communicators to show that decisions were made following best practices and company policies.                             

For many the approach to RFPs continues to be of the carving-the-ham-at-both-ends variety, with corporate communications professionals either creating them from scratch or just reaching out to agencies they know and asking them to respond. Corporate purchasing tools shoehorn a communications RFP into a corporate template – rarely a good fit.

For those sitting in corporate headquarters at the top of the hiring tree, doing what has always been done may not seem to be an issue. That is, until they start sending out RFPs, and many of the agencies they want to work with decline to participate. Or when they hear complaints that the RFP didn’t contain the information the agencies needed to respond, the process took too long, or it was simply a cattle call wasting agencies’ time. All of which, not only reduces the number of agencies responding, but damages corporations ability to engage agencies in the future.  

Having sat in the corporate hot seat, I know that it’s all too easy to dismiss these concerns and just focus on the firms that took the time (however labor intensive for both parties) to go through a still largely manual RFP process. What gets missed is the potential lost opportunity to engage the ‘best’ firm for an assignment and the wasted time of a bad process.

There are a number of ways in which a technology-driven RFP and RFQ process can make a big difference for both clients and agencies while helping to ensure they remain a viable path to hiring. 

Here are just a few of those benefits: 

• RFPs can be created, sent, and responded to securely and in a fraction of the time of traditional approaches  

• RFQs can be sent to qualified agencies, professionals or service providers before an RFP to narrow the list of firms being asked to complete a more time-intensive RFP

• Communications-focused, fully-customizable templates ensure an RFP has the information agencies need to respond 

• Clients can compare responses side-by-side

• Supporting material can be uploaded within the RFP by the client, and agencies (if requested) can add presentations or other materials to their response

• Using dashboards, a client can see if the RFP has been opened and, when integrated with contact information, they have the ability to follow up and re-send

• RFPs can be sent to the individual in the agency who will complete the RFP 

• Responses to RFPs can be provided as PDFs, printed out, and shared with members of the team evaluating the firms

• The RFP process can be run by the company or with the support of agency search consultants    

• The process can be technology- or consultant-led or a hybrid, saving the client time and allow them to continue working on existing assignments with the agency of record, other projects, and business unit, agency or franchise support  

In short, a technology-driven RFP process will save both corporations and agencies time, ensure companies benefit from improved agency participation, and lead to better outcomes. 

That’s the promise and experience of the industry-first RFP tools we developed and built into the CommunicationsMatch™ Select™ RFP tools. Used by blue chip firms, these tools are now an integrated part of CommPRO’s industry memberships.