Your RFP Process Is Broken — And Costing You More Than You Think
The Request for Proposal (RFP) has long been the gold standard for enterprise software procurement. In theory, it’s a structured, objective way to evaluate vendors and make the best decision.
In practice? It’s often a bureaucratic nightmare — slow, expensive, disconnected from business needs, and ironically, still prone to failure.
If your organization relies on traditional RFPs to choose software, it may be time to ask a tough question: Is the process actually helping you make better decisions, or is it just creating the illusion of diligence while draining time, money, and momentum?
Here’s why the standard RFP process is broken — and what you should be doing instead.
It’s Time-Consuming — for Everyone
RFPs often take 3–6 months from creation to contract, and much longer in public or highly regulated industries. That’s a huge delay in solving the underlying problem that triggered the RFP in the first place.
Teams lose precious time waiting for “the process” to play out.
Stakeholders disengage.
Business priorities shift midstream. Meanwhile, competitors with faster decision-making cycles are already implementing and benefiting from the right solutions.
It’s Expensive and Resource-Heavy
A typical RFP involves dozens of people across departments: procurement, legal, IT, security, business leads — each adding layers of review and revision.
The opportunity cost of that internal labor is staggering. For vendors, it’s equally draining. They may invest dozens of hours or more responding to lengthy, generic questionnaires with little hope of real engagement.
The result? The best vendors sometimes opt out altogether — or send boilerplate responses just to tick a box.
It Doesn’t Guarantee Better Decisions
Despite the effort, RFPs frequently lead to the wrong choice. Why?
Generic Templates: Most RFPs are built on outdated, one-size-fits-all templates that don’t reflect real business needs.
Overemphasis on Features: Decision-makers often get caught up in long checklists instead of understanding how the tool fits into workflows or drives outcomes.
Misaligned Scoring: Weighted scoring models often reflect internal politics more than practical needs.
Salesmanship over Substance: Vendors who are better at writing proposals or playing the procurement game win — even if they’re not the best fit. “We followed the process perfectly and still ended up with the wrong solution” is a familiar story.
It’s Rigid and Doesn’t Reflect How People Actually Use Software Procurement
teams look for compliance. End users care about usability. The RFP rarely captures the nuance of how a product will perform in real-world conditions:
Can your team configure it easily?
Does it work with your data?
Is adoption realistic?
Will it evolve with your needs? These questions rarely make it into the RFP — or if they do, they’re buried under hundreds of line items that distract from what really matters.
So What’s the Alternative?
Companies that make better software decisions are ditching the rigid RFP in favor of modern, agile evaluation models. Here’s what that looks like:
Problem-Centric Discovery
Start with a clear articulation of the business problem. Align stakeholders on outcomes, not features.
Live Trials with Real Data
See how the product actually works — not just how it's described in a PDF. Pilot programs, sandboxes, and live environments are more telling than spec sheets.
Collaborative Evaluation
Engage cross-functional teams. IT, security, operations, and end users. Early and continuously. Weight their feedback more than sales gloss.
Lightweight Scorecards
Replace massive RFP spreadsheets with targeted scorecards that evaluate real needs, integration fit, usability, and support.
Transparent, Ongoing Vendor Dialogue
Focus on partnership, not posturing. Vendors should be part of your discovery process, not just responders to a document.
Final Thoughts
The traditional RFP process is like using a map from 1995 to navigate the modern software landscape. It’s slow, inaccurate, and built for a world that no longer exists. If your goal is to find software that drives real outcomes, improves operations, and supports transformation — it’s time to rethink how you buy. A faster, leaner, and more collaborative process isn’t just more efficient. It leads to smarter decisions.