Working with procurement

I’ve been talking to Tina Fegent about RFI’s and RFP’s and my experience working on them over the past few years.  I'm concerned that there is duplication of effort on both sides and that the end result is often lots of work and a slower response to achieving real cost savings or efficiencies.   Tina has very kindly agreed to let me discuss these points at her CIPS Marketing Group, which I will be doing on Feb 14th.  I hope that by opening a dialogue we can start to improve processes and results on both client and supplier side. 

Outlined here are some of my findings.
No real structure on RFI's and RFP's with every company doing it differently, so duplication of effort on both sides

Deadlines quite tight for supplier but procurement then miss set deadlines and fail to communicate

Using old RFPs to create new ones thereby using the wrong terminology or category definitions

Lack of understanding re TUPE and it's implications

Sharing of supplier questions

Lack of understanding of volumes

Quality of debriefs (if there is a debrief) 

I'll let you know how our discussions go.