Overview

A typical tender process involves the customer analysing and documenting its requirements in a Request for Proposals (RFP) to which interested suppliers will prepare a response. In larger procurements the process will be more sophisticated, but the basic structure remains the same.

The RFP is fundamentally important. Suppliers will base their offering (and pricing) on the RFP’s content, and it is likely that that content will form part of the contractual assumptions which, if inaccurate, permit the supplier to alter its pricing.

In the second of a two-part look at issues arising out of the IT tender process, Shoosmiths considers what can happen when the process is poorly run.