Software RFP: How to Write a Request for Proposal

RFPs serve eight primary purposes: transparency, structured evaluation, simplified decision-making, clear expectations, risk mitigation, innovation encouragement, budget alignment, and legal framework documentation. Poorly crafted RFPs fail all eight simultaneously.

Potential Challenges and How to Avoid Them

Poor RFP quality creates recognizable failure patterns: stakeholders interpret vague requirements differently, causing evaluation delays. Scope gaps trigger change orders during contract negotiation. Top vendors decline unclear solicitations entirely. Implementation failures follow when poorly defined requirements produce mismatched solutions.

Understanding this cascade reveals why knowing how to write an RFP correctly matters so much. Your RFP is not merely a document—it is a prediction engine that determines whether you receive thoughtful, tailored proposals or generic responses that barely address your needs.

Choosing the Right Document: RFP, RFI, or RFQ

Before drafting an RFP, confirm it's the right procurement document for your situation. RFx is the collective term for "request-for" documents—RFI, RFQ, and RFP—each serving different stages of the procurement process. Using the wrong document wastes time for both your organization and potential vendors.

Not all engagements require an RFP. The appropriate document depends on project complexity, how well-defined your requirements are, and the degree of innovation you're seeking. An RFI may be more appropriate when you're still exploring options; an RFQ fits when you need standard products at competitive prices.

There are actually eight types of RFP processes beyond this basic distinction:

• Open RFP — open to all qualified vendors who wish to respond

• Closed RFP — issued to a pre-selected group of vendors

• Informal RFP — simplified process for smaller projects

• Two-Step RFP — technical proposals evaluated first, then financial proposals from qualified vendors

• ITT (Invitation to Tender) — formal public-sector procurement with strict compliance requirements

• Performance-Based RFP — focused on outcomes and results rather than specific methods

The key decision point: An RFI gathers preliminary information before formal requirements are defined, while an RFP requests detailed proposals with specific solutions and pricing. If you can't clearly articulate what success looks like, start with an RFI. If you know exactly what you need and want competitive bids on price, use an RFQ. If you need vendors to propose solutions to a defined problem, use an RFP.

Strategic Foundation: Defining Success Before You Write

Before drafting a single question, successful RFPs are won or lost in the quiet work of internal alignment—understanding your own challenge so clearly that vendors can respond with precision. A Request for Proposal is a formal, questionnaire-style document issued to potential vendors from an organization intending to buy a product or service, gathering vendor data in a standardized format for easier comparison.

This definition, while accurate, misses the essential point: the RFP's effectiveness is predetermined during the strategic foundation phase, not during drafting. Organizations that invest in understanding their challenges, defining clear objectives, and securing stakeholder alignment before writing questions receive fundamentally higher-quality vendor responses.

RFPs serve five interconnected strategic purposes that all depend on upfront clarity: ensuring selection from multiple vendors is based on data rather than relationships or sales presentations, creating structured evaluation for complex considerations like vendor experience and security posture, stimulating competitive pricing as vendors know they're being compared apples-to-apples, establishing fair and documented processes that resist accusations of favoritism, and enabling thorough vendor scrutiny that reduces the risk of costly implementation failures. Without internal alignment on these purposes, the RFP becomes a document searching for a strategy.

The most time-consuming preparatory activity—and arguably the most important—is getting buy-in from everyone who will become part of the process, including the person who will have final sign-off. Mike Quinn captures this truth with characteristic directness: without stakeholder alignment, even a beautifully written RFP will face challenges during evaluation when participants disagree on what matters most.

Stakeholder alignment transforms the RFP from a procurement exercise into a partnership catalyst.

Defining Project Scope and Project Needs

Organizations should issue RFPs for strategic, high-value, or high-impact projects when they have specific questions for vendors and are ready to make a purchase, with typical RFP project budget thresholds ranging from $5,000 to $250,000. Below this threshold, the investment in a formal RFP process often exceeds the value gained. Above it, the consequences of poor vendor selection justify significant upfront preparation.

The key question is not whether you can issue an RFP, but whether you're prepared to do the strategic work that makes RFPs successful.

Document Architecture: Structure That Guides and Evaluates

A 57-page enterprise RFP and a two-page technical brief from a lean startup both achieve the same goal—yet their structures could not be more different, revealing that effective RFP architecture is not about a universal template but about intentional design that serves your specific evaluation needs. The RFP document is fundamentally a structural tool—especially for complex projects—that must accomplish two simultaneous goals: guide vendors toward submitting relevant proposals, and create a framework that enables your team to evaluate those proposals fairly and consistently.

Without deliberate architecture, RFPs become either too vague (yielding unusable responses) or too rigid (scaring off qualified vendors who can't navigate complex requirements).

Effective RFPs include key RFP components that form the backbone of any well-structured document:

• Project Overview — goals, objectives, expected deliverables, and timeline

• Background Information — organization context and project history

• Detailed Project Requirements — technical specifications and functional needs

• Timeline — submission deadlines and key milestones

• Proposal Submission Guidelines — submission instructions covering format, length, and required components

• Evaluation Criteria — scoring methodology and weight distribution

These components represent the minimum viable structure—successful RFPs customize additional sections to address project-specific goals and technical needs.

Company Overview and Executive Summary Requirements

Evaluation criteria and scoring grids serve a dual purpose: they communicate to vendors exactly what matters, and they provide evaluators with an objective framework that reduces bias. When criteria are explicit, vendors tailor responses to your priorities and evaluators score consistently. Vague criteria undermine both. Your RFP's architecture shapes who responds—formal, prescriptive structures attract compliance-focused vendors, while conversational, values-driven RFPs attract mission-aligned partners.

Enterprise clients and government entities may need 50+ page documents with detailed scoring criteria; lean startups can achieve RFP success with two-page conversational documents. Tone and length should match your organizational culture and project complexity, not arbitrary rules.

Successful RFP development follows three sequential steps. First, define project requirements: scope, goals, and background context. Second, create the RFP document using a consistent template with all essential sections. Third, develop the proposal template that ensures comparable information from each vendor. Skipping steps or completing them out of order creates downstream problems far harder to fix than proper sequencing.

Writing Each Section: Practical Guidance

Knowing the components of an RFP is different from knowing how to write them well. This section provides specific guidance for the sections that most commonly underperform.

Introduction and Project Overview

An effective RFP introduction should include four essential elements: organization overview (size, industry, locations), RFP purpose and expected outcomes, project scope (processes and functionalities required), and timeline including expected implementation date. The introduction sets the tone—vendors decide within the first page whether your RFP merits serious attention or a templated response.

What to include:

• Organization context: who you are, what you do, relevant scale metrics

• Business driver: why you're issuing this RFP now

• Desired outcome: what success looks like in concrete terms

• Timeline overview: key dates from submission through implementation

Common mistakes: Burying the business need under boilerplate language, omitting decision timeline, failing to explain why existing solutions are inadequate.

Scope of Work and Requirements

The scope section determines whether vendors can accurately estimate effort, timeline, and pricing. Vague scope produces vague proposals. Clear scope and selection criteria helps organizations avoid costly contract issues and project delays caused by mismatched expectations.

Structure requirements clearly:

• Functional requirements: What the solution must do

• Non-functional requirements: Performance, security, scalability, compliance standards

• Integration requirements: Systems the solution must connect with

• Data requirements: Migration needs, data handling, storage expectations

Distinguish between mandatory requirements (must-have for consideration) and preferred requirements (nice-to-have that improve scoring). This hierarchy helps vendors self-select and helps evaluators weight responses appropriately.

Evaluation Criteria Section

Don't hide your evaluation criteria—publish them. The five key elements of a successful RFP response include understanding exactly what matters to evaluators. When you publish criteria and weights, vendors compete on the factors you actually care about.

Example evaluation criteria structure:

Budget and Pricing Section

Ambiguous pricing requests produce incomparable proposals. Specify exactly how you want pricing presented: hourly rates by role, fixed project price, milestone-based payments, or subscription models. Key RFP content components include a standardized pricing template that forces vendors into comparable formats.

Pricing guidance to include:

• Acceptable pricing models (fixed, T&M, hybrid)

• Required cost breakdowns (labor, materials, travel, contingency)

• Payment terms and milestone expectations

• How change orders will be priced

Industry-Specific Considerations

RFPs are not one-size-fits-all. RFPs are commonly used across multiple industries including IT services, software vendors, healthcare, and government contracts—but each context requires specific adaptations.

Healthcare RFPs

Healthcare procurements must address HIPAA compliance explicitly. Key terminology includes PHI (Protected Health Information)—personal health data protected under federal law. Your RFP should require:

• HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) willingness

• Data encryption standards for PHI at rest and in transit

• Audit logging and access control capabilities

• Breach notification procedures and timelines

• Staff training certifications on HIPAA compliance

For EHR software and HIPAA-compliant tools, include specific questions about HL7/FHIR interoperability standards and meaningful use certification status.

Government RFPs

Government RFPs for ongoing services can extend to 57 pages with detailed background and scoring criteria. Public sector procurement requires:

• FAR compliance (Federal Acquisition Regulation) for federal contracts

• Strict formatting requirements that disqualify non-compliant responses

• Mandatory certifications (small business status, security clearances)

• Formal evaluation procedures with documented scoring justification

• Public disclosure requirements for evaluation criteria and selection rationale

ITT Invitation to Tender is the formal public-sector procurement mechanism with strict compliance requirements. Government RFPs typically require longer response periods and more detailed documentation than private sector equivalents.

Enterprise and Technology RFPs

Enterprise decision-makers report that RFPs now require more technical and security-related documentation than three years ago. Modern technology RFPs should include:

• Security questionnaires: SOC 2 Type II certification, penetration testing results, vulnerability management

• Data handling: GDPR compliance for EU data subjects, data residency requirements, right-to-deletion capabilities

• Integration requirements: API documentation, SSO/SAML support, existing system compatibility

• Due Diligence Questionnaires: Documents assessing vendor capabilities, financial stability, and compliance posture

Nonprofit and Mission-Driven RFPs

Organizations like the Children's Defense Fund use approachable, conversational language to convey goals and values rather than formal procurement language. Mission-driven RFPs often emphasize:

• Alignment with organizational values and mission

• Community impact and social responsibility

• Flexibility for organizations with limited procurement infrastructure

• Relationship-building potential over transactional efficiency

The tone and formality of your RFP should match your organizational culture and the expectations of your target vendor pool.

The Art and Science of Question Design

Question quality determines whether you receive generic, difficult-to-compare proposals or precise, actionable responses. The creative element comes from anticipating what information you truly need; the scientific element involves structuring questions to elicit comparable, measurable responses.

Effective questions align directly with the five core components of winning RFP responses: Executive Summary, Technical Specifications, Implementation Plan, Security Protocols, and Compliance documentation. Each component requires specific question types that elicit the information evaluators need.

Technical capability questions should require narrative responses with evidence; security questions should request documentation and attestation; implementation questions should demand timeline and methodology details; pricing questions should use standardized rate sheets that enable total cost of ownership analysis. When questions map cleanly to evaluation criteria, the entire proposal process becomes more efficient for everyone involved.

Strategic question design follows a systematic process that improves with practice:

1. Categorize questions by purpose — qualification questions determine basic fit, evaluation questions enable weighted scoring, and clarification questions address edge cases

2. Map each question to evaluation criteria — link every question to a specific criterion and desired response format

3. Include security and compliance questions — address industry-specific requirements and regulatory needs

4. Sequence by priority — place high-priority, heavily-weighted items first, lower-priority items last

5. Define acceptable response formats — specify yes/no, scale, narrative limit, or document attachment to reduce comparison variability

Common question design pitfalls can undermine even the most carefully planned RFP. Avoid double-barreled questions that ask two things at once, creating confusion about which aspect the responder should address. Define concrete evaluation criteria before issuing the RFP, not after responses arrive.

Weight security questions appropriately given the current trend toward increased technical scrutiny. Include industry-specific terminology where relevant to signal that you understand the domain. Sequence questions to reduce respondent cognitive load, placing critical criteria early where they'll receive the most attention.

Evaluation Criteria and the Evaluation Process

According to strategic response experts, organizations that prioritize open communication, transparent selection criteria, and clear evaluation processes don't just receive better proposals—they receive proposals that actually match what they need. This principle runs counter to the instinct to keep evaluation criteria secret, as if hidden criteria give issuers some strategic advantage. The opposite is true: transparent criteria lead to higher-quality proposals because responders can tailor their submissions to address what actually matters, eliminating the scattergun approach that produces irrelevant information.

Evaluation criteria transparency is the most concrete form of open communication Mike Quinn describes. When responders understand exactly what matters—because you've published both the factors and their relative weight—they can demonstrate relevant qualifications rather than flooding proposals with everything they do.

This benefits the issuer by creating genuine competition on the factors you actually care about, rather than guessing which aspects will receive attention. The quality of proposals you receive improves, and the time required for evaluation decreases because evaluators can score against clear criteria.

Transparent evaluation criteria look specific enough that two different evaluators would score a given response consistently. This precision requires defining not just the factors but their relative weights, distinguishing required elements from preferred elements, explaining the scoring methodology, and specifying the timeline for evaluation and notification. BMC Software's RFP resources consistently emphasize that criteria should be specific enough that a third party could evaluate proposals consistently. This clarity serves the issuing organization by creating a defensible, consistent evaluation process that's easier to manage internally and results in faster, more reliable selection decisions.

The transparency advantage extends beyond individual proposals to shape the entire vendor relationship. Modern Strategic Response Management (SRM) workflows incorporate version control, task tracking, and milestones precisely because evaluation transparency requires tracking multiple criteria across proposals.

When you publish your criteria before proposals are due, consider a Q&A period where responders can ask for clarification, and provide feedback to unsuccessful bidders when possible, you signal that this is a collaborative partnership rather than a transactional procurement exercise. This positioning attracts higher-quality vendors and sets the tone for a productive ongoing relationship.

Process Management: From Release to Selection

The average RFP process takes 4 to 8 weeks from initial planning to signed contract—yet most vendors need only 2 weeks to respond if they truly understand your business. This disparity immediately signals that the bottleneck and the opportunity for process improvement lie on the issuing organization's side.

Efficient process management directly correlates with response quality: rushed vendors produce rushed proposals, but rushed issuers produce RFPs that confuse vendors and require endless clarification. The 4-8 week timeline reveals that preparation and evaluation consume 75% of the total cycle, making internal coordination the critical leverage point.

Successful process management means establishing clear decision rights, communication protocols, and timeline accountability for each stakeholder group. Five key stakeholders require coordination: business stakeholders and project managers who define requirements and success metrics, procurement professionals who manage compliance and contract terms, consultants who provide subject matter expertise and benchmark comparisons, executives including CFOs and CPOs who approve budget and authorize awards, and vendors who respond to the RFP and negotiate terms.

Their interests often conflict—business stakeholders want comprehensive requirements, vendors want clear scope, procurement wants compliance, and executives want speed. Successful process management navigates these tensions through explicit governance structures established before the RFP releases.

Proposal Timeline and Contract Terms

The Q&A period is where many processes break down without clear escalation paths. Jason Coughlin of NREL describes agencies managing "the back and forth responding to bidder questions and concerns" as a core process function. This requires centralizing questions, tracking responses, and ensuring all bidders receive the same clarifications.

The goal is to use questions as a signal for improving future RFPs—when multiple bidders ask similar questions, it often indicates that section needs clearer language or additional context. The Q&A phase should not feel adversarial; it should feel like a collaborative process that improves response quality for everyone.

Payment Terms and Pricing Structure

Clear payment terms eliminate ambiguity that can derail contract negotiations after vendor selection. Specify payment schedules, milestone-based releases, retention clauses, and acceptable payment methods in your RFP to ensure vendor proposals include compatible terms and a proposed budget structure.

When payment structure expectations are unclear, winning vendors often propose terms that conflict with organizational policies, forcing last-minute negotiations that delay project kickoff.

Continuous Improvement: Learning From Each RFP

Every RFP you write contains a wealth of untapped data—yet most organizations analyze only the winning proposals, missing the actionable insights hidden in every submission, response rate, and evaluator feedback. RFP writing is not a one-and-done exercise but an iterative process that compounds over time. Sievo's research analyzes $1.4 trillion USD in actual transactions to derive industry-specific KPIs—illustrating how data-driven organizations transform raw procurement data into performance improvements.

The same principle applies to RFP processes: each document you create, distribute, and evaluate generates signals that, when systematically collected and analyzed, reveal patterns for continuous improvement.

Each RFP cycle generates quantifiable data that, when systematically collected and analyzed, reveals patterns for measurable process improvement. Sievo's methodology emphasizes "actionable insights you can trust"—data that is structured, consistent, and directly tied to process decisions. For RFP processes, this means tracking measurable indicators like response rates from qualified vendors, time-to-award cycles, proposal quality scores, and stakeholder satisfaction ratings.

Without baselines, improvement becomes impossible to measure. Organizations that treat each RFP as a learning opportunity and systematically incorporate those lessons create compounding advantages over competitors who start from scratch every time.

Effective continuous improvement requires establishing clear baselines and KPIs before each RFP cycle, allowing teams to track progress against concrete benchmarks rather than relying on subjective impressions. Like software teams that set concrete DevOps targets—reducing deployment time from weeks to hours, achieving 90% automated test coverage, or cutting mean time to recovery by half—RFP teams should establish clear benchmarks for their own proposal processes.

Specific metrics teams should track include percentage of proposals that meet minimum quality thresholds, average revision cycles, frequency of scope changes mid-process, and evaluator satisfaction with the evaluation process itself.

Institutionalizing lessons from every RFP—win or loss—requires dedicated debrief protocols that capture both quantitative data and qualitative insights. Conduct structured vendor debriefs regardless of outcome, asking what was clear, what was confusing, and what could be improved in your requirements or process.

Compare results against previous RFPs using the same metrics to identify trends—are response times improving? Are evaluator scores rising? Document specific improvements to implement in your next cycle based on data, not assumptions. Organizations that establish quarterly or bi-annual reviews of their RFP performance data identify patterns that span individual projects and drive sustained improvement.

Next Steps: Your RFP Improvement Action Plan

An RFP isn't a document you write once—it's a living asset that, when continuously refined, can reduce response time while improving win rates. The difference between companies that win high-value contracts and those that don't often comes down to their post-RFP review and iteration habits. Continuous improvement—not perfectionism—is what separates RFP programs that evolve from those that stagnate. Companies that treat each RFP as both a standalone deliverable and a learning opportunity compound their advantage over time.

Immediate actions can drive meaningful improvement in your next RFP:

• Conduct a post-submission audit within 48 hours — capture feedback while details remain fresh

• Score each response against predefined criteria — establish trend data for comparison over time

• Identify the 20% of improvements that drive 80% of results — focus on high-impact changes first

• Update your RFP template library — incorporate proven language and successful section structures

• Schedule quarterly RFP program reviews — assess progress and adjust priorities systematically

Building an Effective RFP Template Library

A structured improvement framework transforms sporadic improvements into systematic gains. Without a defined process, companies default to reacting to losses rather than proactively strengthening their RFP program between submissions. Compare the traditional approach—rewriting sections from scratch each time, accepting vendor defaults for evaluation criteria, relying on informal feedback discussions—with the continuous improvement approach: refining and reusing proven content blocks, tailoring scoring to organizational priorities, conducting structured debriefs with scorecards, and maintaining a centralized repository with version control using dedicated RFP software.

The compounding effect of a 5% improvement each quarter translates to meaningful competitive differentiation within a year.

Your RFP improvement checklist should guide implementation: Did you define clear evaluation criteria before receiving proposals? Did you capture stakeholder feedback within one week of submission? Did you document what worked in your strongest sections? Did you identify gaps where responders raised valid concerns? Did you update your template library with improvements? Did you assign owners for each improvement action item? These questions transform abstract continuous improvement principles into concrete, accountable actions that drive real results over time.

The journey from RFP novice to RFP excellence is not about learning how to write an RFP perfectly on your first attempt. It's about building systems that learn from each cycle, accumulating knowledge that makes every subsequent RFP better than the last. Organizations that embrace this mindset don't just win more proposals—they develop a strategic capability that competitors cannot easily replicate.