RFP Assessment Tool

This client was charged with evaluating Requests-for-Proposals (RFPs) as his company prepared to make a $3.5M/year decision. Over his 14 years in his industry, he knew which questions to ask and how to analyze the responses. The challenge:

• Presenting text answers and verbal explanation to managers wouldn’t be meaningful. Visuals were needed.
• A grading tool would help the client quantify and measure the qualitative the responses.

Client provided the questions divided into 11 categories and requested:

• Questions receive a maximum of 5 points
• Points and categories are non-weighted
• Summarize the scores for the categories and overall scores for each vendor
• Create visual representations that I think would help “see” the data

Final Product

• Single Excel workbook that updates in real time as questions are graded on the front page.
• The client was very happy with the number of views and summaries provided.
• The graphs (below) were a critical piece of the analysis that helped the company make a final decision.

NOTE: The images below have been modified to protect proprietary data

RFP Grader Page 1	Grid with six vendors across the top, questions along the side divided into the client’s 11 categories Validation: User isn’t allowed to enter anything other than numbers 1-5 Cells with formulae are protected so that they can’t be accidentally corrupted or deleted
	Upper part of the page. Numerical summaries of the 11 categories. Green highlighted boxes show highest scores in each category. Here, we see that Vendor F tied for high score in 1 category and Vendor B scored highest in no categories. Lower part of the page is a stacked bar graph as visual representation of the upper part. It’s easy to see that Vendor A scored the highest overall. Notice: the red sections represent Disaster Recovery. Vendor A didn’t score as well as C and E. This may be enough to knock A out of contention. It may be inconsequential. Maybe the client will request more information.
	Bar graph on top is a high level view of the vendors side-by-side divided into the 11 categories. 12 mini graphs The blue shows the overall scores Peach colored graphs are the 11 categories and another way of seeing things like: Vendor A is highest overall Vendor A scored 3rd highest in Account Management and Disaster Recovery Vendor C scored second highest overall and was more consistently #1 or #2 across all categories.