As a Sourcing and Procurement professional in telecoms, understanding the market place to identify vendors based on your business requirements with your specific telecom product and service types is crucial.<\/p>\n
Whether you’re sourcing a one-off solution or large scale RFP the fundamentals of this activity involve:<\/p>\n
1. understanding your business requirements<\/p>\n
2. identifying vendors which can meet your business needs in a cost-effective manner and deliver a quality performing solution that works.<\/p>\n
Gathering business requirements will be the key to your success in sourcing a solution that meets or exceeds your business expectations.<\/p>\n
Your project office, engineering team or service delivery colleague should provide you with a detailed overview of the solution technical requirements which should include the service type i.e. MPLS, Leased Line, T1, bandwidth, network interface type, diversity, latency requirements and expected SLAs and KPIs etc.<\/p>\n
These\u00a0requirements have been engineered to consider the office applications, headcount, latency, replication network specifications and potential future state design of the network.<\/p>\n
*Don\u2019t be surprised when you\u2019re asked to go to market for more than 1 solution or multiple times.<\/i><\/p>\n
Typically, engineers will design solutions which can be delivered across several different technical solutions and will request multiple options to understand how the design can be delivered and the respective costs, equipment and SLAs associated with the overall design. \u00a0Keep in mind in the back of their mind, they have an optimum solution and are thinking through the overhead it will take to manage the solution once delivered.<\/p>\n
Now that you have the requirements defined, your next task is to construct an RFP or carrier quote.<\/p>\n
A key element here is to construct the data in a logical organized way such that you can effectively analyze and score the vendor responses. \u00a0Our recommendation is to use a tool like temforce\u2019s RFP utility or Request tool but assuming you\u2019re using a spreadsheet or word doc layout the requirements by breaking them down into multiple spreadsheets or multiple sections detailing each element of your requirements.<\/p>\n
For example, start out with an overall high-level summary of your business and the objective of your RFP or in the case of a one off Quote Request a tight summary of the requirement containing the specifics.<\/p>\n
1 – Organization Background<\/strong><\/p>\n 2 – RFP Goals and Objectives<\/strong><\/p>\n 3 – Technical Requirements<\/strong><\/p>\n 4 – Service delivery SLA information<\/strong><\/p>\n 5 – Commercials (captured in excel)<\/strong><\/p>\n and so on ….<\/p>\n *Helpful Tip – if you\u2019re running an RFP this is your chance to really gather some useful data and assess the going market rate. \u00a0Break the pricing down into each element and we suggest going as far as requesting the price for each pricing component i.e. Access, Port, Management, CPM, VOIP Channel Cost etc. on separate tabs. \u00a0When performing an RFP, it\u2019s ok to request pricing for bandwidths over and above your current business requirement. \u00a0i.e. say your MPLS port bandwidth today is 4Meg request pricing from 2 \u2013 100.<\/i><\/p>\n Detail your business requirements and provide an area for the carrier to respond with for example \u201cComply, or Do Not meet Requirements.\u201d Include an area for the carrier to provide additional comments if necessary. \u00a0Depending on the type of quote or RFP you\u2019ll need to include inventory information such as location details, required bandwidth, voice usage, mobile usage, required SLAs etc.<\/p>\n Deciding which vendors to send the RFP or quote does require some thought. \u00a0Ideally you should include vendors that you have a business relationship with already today or perhaps a carrier that you\u2019ve met before and has network coverage or the technical capabilities to meet your overall business needs.<\/p>\n A few supplier considerations to think though:<\/p>\n Structure your RFP pricing to capture the necessary elements of a data request regards of the technology type i.e. leased line vs. MPLS as switched on carrier rep will understand which elements to complete to return the quote back to you.<\/p>\n Run a quick analysis to access, the average, MIN, MAX price across the suppliers to benchmark their price against each other. \u00a0(Note: Assuming you have MPLS your carrier contract schedule should contain your PORT cost and on-net access so start there first.)<\/p>\n As the responses are returned use this information to score whether the carrier can effectively deliver against your technical needs. \u00a0In the perfect world, a \u201csimple one off\u201d request is a lot simpler to analyze. \u00a0Ideally the requirements you\u2019ve outlined are exactly what the carriers have responded to. Therefore, analyzing the commercials is what you can focus on.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve developed an RFP, establish a scoring metric from say 1-5 or 1-10 with an agreed spectrum of high and low and establish a process where each respective team has an owner that will be responsible for scoring their identified area. \u00a0For example, have your Service Delivery team focus on scoring the SLAs and KPIs, and Engineering score the technical elements.<\/p>\n *Helpful Tip: try to avoid providing the teams with the commercials as everyone will focus on the cost and this may influence how one vendor is scored.<\/i>\u00a0\u00a0Set a timeframe for when the responses are due and give yourself enough to review and digest each proposal and generate an overall summary. \u00a0Make sure you read the executive summary as this provides a brief overview of the understanding of the RFP and their respective response. \u00a0Often the Executive Summary is where carriers will highlight their view of the benefits of selecting them and any deal benefits credits, discounts etc.<\/p>\n As you move towards a decision to award the RFP prepare a nice tight summary of the RFP. \u00a0Within the RFP summary include information like:<\/p>\n Finally you\u2019ll want to role this up into the recommended vendor solution outlining the reasons why and detail the next steps which might include, shortlist down selection, preliminary vendor negotiations for BAFO, contract negotiations, etc.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot to consider and put together as you submit an RFP or Quote to the market however, taking a step back to think through your approach to the RFP will help to ensure you haven\u2019t missed anything big. \u00a0Using a solution like temforce will shorten the amount of effort and time spent in preparing, analyzing, summarizing, and awarding your next telecom Quote or RFP.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Temforce – Category Management SaaS enables teams to manage their Telecom, IT Categories and Suppliers through 1 easy to use application.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a Sourcing and Procurement professional in telecoms, understanding the market place to identify vendors based on your business requirements with your specific telecom product and service types is crucial. 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Who should receive the RFP?<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Received Responses: \u2190<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Making an Informed Decision<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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