An RFP is a Request for Proposal from a vendor. Within this request, corporations normally insert their website needs, goals and vision. An RFP will also allow a consultant to give a description of what need to be changed concerning the website such as tasks of replacing and updating pages, better navigation, making the site accessible for the handicapped such as those that are visually impaired, or have hearing impairment, and the list goes on and on. There are three very important sections of the Request for Proposal Document for a software acquisition project, and that is the Written Proposal, The Functional Requirements, and the cost. The written proposal is very time consuming to analyze and evaluate. The request for proposal itself should have a very clear detail oriented section that outlines the agency’s wants and needs from the vendor, and it should be specific. The functional requirements section has hundreds of requirements that are subdivided into a major area that the proposed solution is to address. However, there are too many of these requirements to evaluate independently, this section of the proposal will then become more of a self-reporting analysis by the vendor of their products ability to meet every requirement. In order to receive accurate response from the vendors there are two things that should be very clear; first, each requirement response will become a part of the contract of the vendor, and second, the vendor must evaluate the extent to which it meets the requirements.
The functional requirements section of the RFP should be well written, concise, and should be written in an orderly and controlled structure. However, there will always be some RFP documents that will not be well written, because of lack of detail. In this case, a customer doesn’t accurately describe what they want, and it could be impossible to write or price it. There are also very large RFP’s that sometimes have more than one author, and the author’s end up...