Receiving and Processing Vendor Responses

Your RFP should describe in strict terms the format in which the proposal is to be provided, the ways it can be delivered and the deadline. Be very strict about compliance to these formal requirements. Allowing a vendor to use a different format or to be late may jeopardize the entire process and force you to repeat it.

Many bid issuers still ask for large numbers of hard copies. As the proposals are often very large, it is both expensive to the vendors and impractical for the evaluators. It is better to have limited (one or two) hard copies and a larger number of soft copies, most conveniently on password-protected USB flash drives.

For RFBs and RFQs, where price is the only evaluation criteria for compliant proposals, it is customary to open the bids in public and announce the quotes immediately. There is no need to do so for RFPs since price is just one of the criteria and these are typically very large documents, making public opening of the proposals impractical.

It is a common courtesy to let all of the vendors know who else is competing for your business, but this is not essential or mandatory.

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Procuring your P25 System: Articles

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