The complete guide to writing an RFP for your digital experiences

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The complete guide to writing an RFP for your digital experiences

Introduction

What is the RFP guide?

A request for proposal (RFP) helps organisations in the search for the right vendor for a project. A successful RFP should make the process of finding and selecting the right vendor easier and will save you time, money and resources in the long run. When you use a certain structure for writing your RFP, the comparison process will be more convenient once all the offers come through.

This Starter Kit will help you ask the right questions and serve as a guideline to structure your RFP in the most effective way possible.

How can you use it?

You can use this RFP Starter Kit as a guideline to ensure that potential vendors propose the best possible DXP solution(s) for your organization, and this in a clear and structured way. Starting from your problem, wishes and needs.

In this blog you will get more information about: 

Important information and questions to include in your RFP

Information about the project 

This part gives vendors a better understanding of your organization, your current digital maturity and ecosystem. This will help them propose a suitable solution just for you.

 

General information about your organization

Provide general information that presents your organization and identifies the needs.

Possible information could be: 

  • Company name, legal form and address
  • Brief history of the organization
  • Description of some key financial figures
  • Number of employees in the organization
  • Composition of the organizational structure (organigram)
  • Vision, strategy and objectives of the company
  • Elements of value
  • A brief description of the current IT landscape

Project doelen en objectieven

Give a clear insight on the goals and objectives for the project. Be specific for a more efficient way of working that will save you time and money. It’s important to distinguish priorities from wishes. This way vendors know where to invest their efforts, and you will get a better solution. Don’t give away your preferred solution yet. Let the vendors propose the best fitted solution. This might give you new insights.

While writing an RFP, consult your colleagues from other departments to gather more information, needs and objectives as many departments in an organization can benefit from the digital experience.

  • Describe the reason(s) why you are looking for a new DXP
  • What goal(s) do you want to achieve by implementing a new DXP?
  • Give more information about your current processes in building digital experiences. How are they set up and how are metrics monitored?
  • What budget do you have in mind for the project?
  • What is the business case and what ROI do you expect?

Description of your organization

Give a more in depth description of your current Digital Experience Platform (DXP) or website environment. This will help potential vendors to recognise your needs more easily and efficiently. 

If you don’t currently have a DXP or website you can skip this part and focus on the following questions about ‘Project goals and objectives’. 

  • More information about your current solutions, like the names.
  • A simplified enterprise architecture diagram can be helpful.
  • When was your current version implemented?
  • What parts do you want to replace, and which solutions do you want to keep?
  • Number of users of the platform and monthly visitors of the websites.
  • Is the solution integrated with other back-end systems? If so, provide a list of integrations.
  • Description of the aspects that are missing in your current solution and that are desired in the new one.
  • Are there any points of attention or bad experiences with the previous implementation project or vendor?

Questions about the vendor

This part lists a number of questions that will allow you to better compare and even (dis) qualify vendors for your project. It can be difficult to know what to ask for. Therefore we provide you with some typical questions. 

 

Basic information about the vendor

  • Company name, legal form and address
  • Brief history of the organization
  • Description of some key financial figures, like total turnover in the past fiscal year
  • Vision, strategy and growth objectives
  • How does the vendor differentiate from competitors?
  • Description of experience with your industry and business processes
  • Is there a Product Research & Development department?

Support

  • Does the vendor have its own support department?
  • Number of employees in the support department
  • What is the support SLA?
  • Does the vendor offer technical and user training?

Employees

  • Number of employees (FTE)
  • Number of employees with DXP expertise
  • Number of employees per location/country
  • Expected employee growth over the next three years and in which domains is the growth expected?
  • Composition of the organizational structure (organigram)

Product and service offering

  • Description of DXP products and services in portfolio
  • Description of other products and services in portfolio
  • What services can the vendor deliver? Is there a partner network to deliver additional services?
  • Number of employees in the service organization

Questions about the product offered by vendor

This part lists a number of questions that will allow you to better compare products offered by different vendors.

 

Basic information

  • Name and version of the proposed solution
  • How frequently are new releases released and are these updates included in the price?
  • Give planned release dates for future versions
  • Will the solution be implemented by the vendor, or by a partner?
  • Is it open source? On what open source technologies and versions is the product based?

References

  • Description of relevant DXP references for our project 

Future proof

  • Has the proposed solution evolved in the last few years?
  • What is the product vision and roadmap?
  • Is the roadmap public? 

Product training

  • Which training do they provide for: administrators and users?
  • If so, where do they provide this training? At their location or our location?
  • How much training do they suggest as a solution for our problem?
  • What is the base price of this training? 

License

  • Base price of the DXP solution
  • Detailed pricing structure of the DXP solution (important criteria like number of users, modules, traffic, etc.)
  • How is the price of a new release determined? Is there an additional cost for each new release or is it included in the maintenance cost?
  • What are the maintenance costs per year?
  • Is it possible to spread the license costs over multiple years?
  • Ask for a timeline
  • Provide guidance as to budget, in order to avoid irrelevant offers

Security

  • How can the vendor guarantee a secured solution?
  • Can the vendor offer the right securities for our project?
  • Can the vendor assure us that the proposed solution complies with EU privacy legislation? 

Data migration

  • How can data be migrated or loaded into the DXP?

Change management

  • Does the vendor offer support for change requirements?

RFP checklists

DXP project checklist 

A DXP project consists of multiple stages. Each stage requires different expertise and team involvement. You can choose to include/exclude certain stages in the project. Perhaps some work is already done. Be as clear as possible on what you expect from the vendors in the scope of this project.

 We have it and can be incorporated in RFPWe have a first approach, but expect the vendor to co-create

We don’t have it and is part of the assignment for vendors

We don't have it and we don't want it incorporated in RFP

Digital experience strategy roadmap    
Digital experience project strategy    
Data architecture    
Enterprise architecture    
Brand guidelines    
Information architecture    
UX prototyping     
Wireframes     
UI design    
Functional analysis    
Technical analysis     
SEO migration    
WCAG    
Project documentation     

 

DXP product features checklist 

This part contains a list of all the functions for each domain of the proposed solution. The list below can be used as a checklist. On each of the topics, carefully consider your detailed requirements. Also, do not assume that this list, once made up, is fixed. If specific requirements emerge, the list can always be extended. Important to know is which requirements are available out of the box within the proposed solution, can be added via custom development or are not possible to do.

 Out of the boxCustom

Not available

Not relevant

CMS
Intuitive page builder    
Version management    
Approval workflow    
Template library    
Flexible content types    
Content taxonomies    
WCAG compliance    
SEO optimizations    
Digital marketing campaign tracking & support    
Content personalization    
Capabilities to manage content across multiple channels, sites and front-ends (headless)    
Capabilities to re-use content from CMS into email    
Responsive or fluid design    
Menu building    
Multi Language    
Multisite    
Advanced roles and permissions    
Insite search    

 

 Out of the boxCustom 

Not available 

Not relevant

MARKETING AUTOMATION
Email marketing    
Form building    
Segment building    
Multistep campaign building    
Email personalization    
Lead scoring en nurturing    
Custom reports    
Support for sms and mobile push messaging    
CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORM
Segment building    
Integration external data sources    
AI driven segmentation    
Omnichannel personalization    
INTEGRATIONS
Integration CRM (detail which CRM)    
Integration DAM    
Integration Marketing Automation    
Integration CDP    
Integration analytics, BI and/or Dashboarding solution     

 

RFP do’s & don’ts

Make sure to:

  • Set high level goals, be clear about the priorities of the project
  • Distinguish between must and nice to have
  • Keep a clear and realistic budget in mind
  • Present vendors with problems, not solutions

 

Do this

  • Focus on used content
  • Focus on a clear navigation
  • Give a walk through your design and discovery process
  • Research vendors upfront and invite a select group to respond to get the most fitting offer
  • Let the vendors give you the solutions for your project
  • Let the personality of your team and organization shine through in the RFP
  • Focus on the overall picture and use a follow-up for more clarity when questions arise
  • Discuss with colleagues from other departments when preparing an RFP

Not this

  • Key pages with a flexible slider
  • Focus on a mega menu
  • Set up a fixed process phase. The vendor most probably had it’s own process that is effective
  • Invite more than five firms to answer your RFP
  • Give vendors too much details as far as the type of response you want
  • Treat writing an RFP as a strict process
  • Expect all your questions to be answered immediately
  • Develop an RFP without consulting users who will operate the platform in the field on day-to-day operations
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