Finding the perfect BPO partner to support your customers’ journey is key.
The right partnership will give you the relationship you want with your customers.
There is no single right or wrong way – it is unique to your business.
Our ‘Guide to Finding the perfect BPO Partner’ is a dynamic, easy-to-use reference guide to the RFP process with key templates that provide you with the tools you need to ensure your procurement project runs smoothly and successfully.
Depending on whether you are a seasoned purchaser of outsourced services or it’s a new project you’ve not been involved in before you may find a couple of sections useful, or you could use the entire guide – whatever works best for you.
Our RFP Toolkit includes:
There’s a wide range of areas to consider when running a successful competitive procurement process.
These include:
A bid should be run like all projects within your company. Preparation time invested upfront is time well spent. It ensures you are ready to hit the ground running and reach the correct outcome quickly and effectively.
It’s worth considering if you want to include a Proof of Concept or Champion Challenger phase in the procurement. These will provide an opportunity to test a supplier’s capabilities before committing to a longer term relationship.
Also known as a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ), this stage is useful if you have a relatively large number of potential suppliers and you are looking to reduce this down to a smaller number to send out a broader, more in-depth set of questions to.
Some buyers choose to request indicative pricing at this stage others wait until the next stage.
If you are looking for bidders to provide indicative pricing you will usually be required to provide more detailed information about the services particularly regarding contact volumes and patterns.
Typically this questionnaire will be at a high level. It provides the opportunity for you to check if potential suppliers meet any mandatory requirements you have such as PCI DSS certification and a specific language capability (in addition to English), as well as confirming they have the relevant experience for your work.
• An example RFI questionnaire can be found here.
• An example Clarification Template can be found here.
1. Prepare initial documentation
2. Issue to potential bidders : These are typically 6-10 BPO providers that you have identified through recommendations, previous relationships and research undertaken.
3. Respond to Clarification Questions (CQs)
4. Receive Responses
5. Review / Evaluate Responses – consolidate input from all team members
6. Select Shortlisted RFP Suppliers (Go to RFP Stage)
This is your primary information gathering tool. It will also be the main information source for potential suppliers so it is important to ensure you are providing suppliers with the right information to shape their responses.
An example RFP document can be found here.
There are optional phases during this stage. For example, you can choose to include a Bidders’ Briefing Session which provides a more interactive engagement with potential suppliers.
If you are looking for underwritten pricing from bidders at this stage, you will need to provide an illustrative contract which includes commercially impacting clauses such as certifications required and SLAs/KPIs with targets together with any penalties for missing targets. Bidders may want to determine the potential impact of these clauses.
If available you should also include a Statement of Work to enable bidders to provide a response that is specific to your business requirements and the services to be delivered.
An example Statement of Work (SOW) document can be found here.
We would always recommend making a visit to the top 3-5 bidders’ sites. Whilst this increases your costs for the procurement it really is the only way to gain a good understanding of the potential suppliers. Some of the key benefits of the site visits will include
Our RFP Toolkit is an easy-to-use reference guide to the Request for Information and Request for Pricing processes. Our straightforward step-by-step guide includes all the key templates you need to ensure your procurement project runs smoothly and successfully. The suite of free templates includes bidder clarification, a bidding glossary, an example statement of work, an example MNDA, RFI & RFP documents, and a short-form master service agreement, or MSA.
More than 25 experienced procurement executives with years of experience from both the buyer and vendor sides helped shape this RFP toolkit. This feedback has helped make it as robust and effective as possible when selecting your perfect Business Process Outsourcing partner.
An example Evaluation Matrix can be found here.
1. Prepare documents – include indicative Master Services Agreement (MSA) & Statement of Work if available
2. Issue RFP documents to your shortlisted 4-6 bidders
3. Hold Briefing Session (all bidders)
4. Respond to CQs
5. Receive responses
6. Presentation of proposal from bidders, including questions from your team
7. Site visits – if visits included. You may want to just visit the top 3 suppliers after initial review of RFP submissions to reduce costs
8.Complete and review evaluation matrices based on RfP content, Bidder Presentations/Q&A and & Site Visits.
9. Select Shortlisted BAFO Suppliers, typically top 2-3 bidders based on Evaluation Matrix for each bidder
BAFO is the opportunity for bidders to provide their most competitive price now they’ve reached the final selection stage.
Request a final price from the top 2-3 bidders as well as a mark-up of the proposed contract if this has not previously been provided to bidders.
If you feel it would be beneficial you could also include a final presentation / meeting with bidders prior the final decision.
This approach should provide you with a level playing field response from your final bidders on which to make your selection.
Once your final selection has been made it’s time to inform all the bidders of the outcome of your procurement project.
Most unsuccessful bidders will ask for a debrief session to understand why they are not the preferred bidder. These sessions are really useful for suppliers to identify key lessons learned which they can address in their future bids.
The debrief sessions should not be seen by bidders as an opportunity to discuss changing the decision you have made.
1. Notify Preferred Bidder
2. Agree new service launch schedule ie the Service Transition Project
3. Agree contract closure schedule
The Contract Award stage is the final stage in this initial phase of creating your new contact centre supplier partnership. Business best practice is for this stage to be completed prior to new services going live.
Most suppliers will need to have a mutually signed contract in place before they can start delivering services but will be fine to start the Service Transition Project before this stage has been completed. However they may require a Letter of Intent providing a formal commitment from your organisation to the partnership.
Your team at this stage is likely to be a mixed group of commercial / legal team members and the relevant operational and technical representatives to support any discussions with the Preferred Bidder and contract amendment reviews.
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