Icon RFP Consulting

A truly effective Request for Proposal (RFP) or Request for Information (RFI) goes far beyond simply identifying the best or most affordable vendor or consultant. It can align competing business objectives behind a uniform set of goals, establish and communicate business, technical and user requirements, define budgetary parameters, and convey known project constraints and requisite milestones.

Moreover, a successful RFP / RFI process can create an immediately productive and efficient relationship with a vendor or consultant. By clearly establishing a common project understanding, organizations can save development time, reduce costs, and meet their project goals.

RFP Process: Much More than a Writing Exercise

Developing and processing RFPs and RFIs can be an extremely time consuming and challenging process. Competing business objectives often make it difficult to converge upon a reasonable set of requirements that can be fulfilled within established budget parameters. Additionally, traditional RFP 'writers' often approach the process with personal or professional biases in mind - for example, emphasizing technical requirements over user or business objectives. At a minimum such biases tend to elicit proposals that fail to meet overall objectives; at worst they can establish incorrect guidelines for entire projects.

Icon: Veteran, Third-Party RFP/RFI Experts

As experts in interactive technology development and requirements elicitation and facilitation, Icon can help you successfully navigate the RFP/ RFI process. We can obtain for your organization proposals and information that exactly meets your needs, reducing time and costs to develop your requests, and freeing up your staff to focus on their core competencies.

Icon approaches RFP / RFI development from a multidisciplinary perspective. Our teams synchronize business, user and technical objectives and requirements, ensuring the proper foundation for a project that will truly meet your organizational goals. And our senior technologists are familiar with a wide range of technologies and vendors. This real-world expertise speeds the proposal solicitation and evaluation processes and ensures that the established budget is in line with current market trends.

Icon provides RFP consulting services to both commercial enterprises and government agencies, and our services include:

• Project opportunity assessment
• RFP/RFI process development
• Requirements elicitation and facilitation
• Budget development and analysis
• Performance and metrics design
• RFP / RFI writing
• Proposal solicitation
• Proposal evaluation
• Vendor analysis, site visits and reference checking
• Vendor selection and negotiation