It arrives as a PDF and a spreadsheet with a deadline attached, and the first question is usually the simplest one. What actually is this? The covering email says RFP, the sourcing platform calls it an event and the document itself says invitation to tender. There is also a questionnaire from their IT security team that nobody mentioned in the first meeting.
The letters matter less than people think. The real questions are what the document wants from you, how much of your team’s time it will take and whether you can still change the buyer’s mind at that stage.
RFx
RFx is shorthand for any request for something, whether that’s information, a quote, a proposal or a tender. You see it in procurement software and in job adverts for bid managers. It’s useful for one reason. It saves listing every variant every time.
RFI, the one people underrate
A request for information is the buyer finding out what the market can do before they commit to anything. In the private sector it’s often how a buyer, or the consultant working for them, cuts a long list of vendors down to the handful they’ll invite to the RFP. There is usually no signed-off budget and no contract at the end of it, so it gets treated as a formality. Somebody fills it in from the website and the team moves on.
That’s a mistake, because the RFI is often the last point where you can shape what the buyer asks for later. If your answer explains how the problem ought to be solved, and the buyer likes it, parts of it have a habit of turning up as requirements in the RFP. Skip it and your competitor’s thinking ends up in the specification instead, and you’re answering their questions for the rest of the deal.
UK public buyers do the same thing through preliminary market engagement, which the Procurement Act 2023 allows as long as no supplier gets an unfair advantage from it.
RFQ
A request for quotation assumes the buyer already knows exactly what they want. A fixed number of licences, 3 days of training, a set support level. You are compared on price and terms, with little room to argue your product is better, because the buyer has already decided what good looks like.
If an RFQ turns up for something complex, a system that needs configuring and integrating with others, it’s worth asking why. In all likelihood someone else has already shaped the requirement, and you’re being asked for a number to benchmark against the supplier they have already chosen.
RFP, the big one
A request for proposal asks how you would solve a problem and what it will cost. It is the heaviest of the lot, and in the private sector it is where most of the real work in a software sale happens. Banks, retailers, utilities, housebuilders and manufacturers all run them, and so does almost anyone buying something that needs a board signature.
What arrives
The typical pack is a covering letter with the timetable and the rules, a requirements spreadsheet, a set of written questions, a pricing template and the buyer’s contract terms. Sometimes there’s a security questionnaire in there as well, and sometimes it turns up later. It might come through a sourcing platform, a data room or plain email, and each is laid out differently, so the first day often goes on working out what is actually being asked and who needs to answer it.
The requirements spreadsheet is where most of the hours go. A software RFP can run to hundreds of rows, each asking whether you meet a requirement and how, with a column for your answer and usually a dropdown next to it. Fully compliant, partially compliant, not compliant, on the roadmap, through a third party. The written questions sit alongside it and cover the things a spreadsheet can’t, like how you’d run the implementation, who would be on the project, how support works and why they should pick you.
Where teams go wrong
The temptation is to answer yes to everything. Evaluators know this, and the good ones test it. A yes that turns out to need custom code, or a feature that’s on the roadmap but won’t exist when they go live, comes back at the demo or, worse, halfway through the implementation. So for every row, be honest about how you meet it. Is it something the product does out of the box, something you set up through its own screens, or something a developer has to build? Custom work has a habit of taking longer and costing more than the proposal said, and buyers have long memories.
The other trap is pasting last year’s answer without reading this year’s question. Buyers reword things for a reason, and an answer that nearly fits reads like one that was copied in, because it was.
How private buyers run it
Private buyers are not bound by public procurement law, so they don’t have to tell you how they’ll score you, and many don’t. Some will share the weighting if you ask. Plenty won’t. Expect an invited shortlist rather than an open call, a round of clarification questions with a cut-off date, and a deadline that leaves no slack for the questions you only spot on day three.
Larger buyers often bring in a consultant to run the process. The consultant probably wrote the requirements, will score the first round and has in all likelihood seen your product before, possibly while it was losing somewhere else. Treat them as the first buyer you have to win over, not as an admin layer.
The written response rarely wins on its own. It gets you onto the shortlist. After that come demos, reference calls, a commercial negotiation and a round of legal redlines, and that’s where most private deals are actually decided. The document still matters later, though. Every answer you gave becomes something the buyer holds you to, in the contract and in the first difficult steering meeting.
When it arrives cold
The worst RFP to receive is the one you didn’t see coming. It lands from a buyer you’ve never spoken to, and when you check the dates it is already well under way. Other suppliers have had it for a fortnight, the clarification window has closed and the deadline is next week.
There are generally only three reasons that happens, and none of them are good. Procurement needs another quote to show they have tested the market, and you’re there to make up the numbers. The buyer is disorganised, which tells you a lot about what the implementation would be like if you won. Or everyone else has been talking to them for months and you simply haven’t, so somebody else shaped the requirements you are now answering.
From the outside you cannot tell which it is. That’s why a late, cold RFP deserves the hardest look of all at bid or no-bid, and why the work that decides these deals happens long before one arrives. If you already know a buyer’s contract is coming up for renewal, who’s new on their side and what they’re unhappy with, the RFP is one you half expected and had a hand in shaping.
RFP is mostly private-sector language. Public buyers in the UK generally say tender or ITT for the same thing.
ITT, and what’s different about public tenders
An invitation to tender is the formal version. Private buyers use the term too, especially in construction and facilities, but in UK public procurement it comes with rules attached, and the rules are the useful part. The buyer has to set out its award criteria and how much each one counts before any bids come in. That’s a gift if you read it properly. A split of 60% quality and 40% price tells you where to spend your time before you have written a word, which is more than most private RFPs will tell you.
Since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24 February 2025, a public tender starts with a tender notice on the central digital platform. Under the open procedure that notice is the invitation to tender itself, and anyone can bid. Under the competitive flexible procedure the buyer can add stages, like asking suppliers to request to take part first, or holding presentations, site visits and negotiation before the final bids.
Pre-qualification, public and private
Before anyone reads your answers, you usually have to get through a gate. Private buyers mostly build it into the RFP, a section of yes or no questions on turnover, insurance, certifications and references that quietly removes anyone who doesn’t fit. Nobody tells you that’s what it’s for.
Public buyers make it a formal stage. For years that was the pre-qualification questionnaire, the PQQ, replaced in 2016 by a standard selection questionnaire that asked the same questions in the same way every time. Under the Procurement Act there’s no standard version any more. Buyers set their own conditions of participation, which have to be proportionate to the contract, and your core company details sit on the central digital platform instead of being typed into every tender.
Either way it’s pass or fail, and it is where good bids die for boring reasons, like a missing insurance certificate, accounts in the wrong format or a case study that’s too old to count. Get someone who isn’t writing the quality answers to check it before it goes.
Security questionnaires and DDQs
These are the ones nobody plans for. The deal is going well, you’re on the shortlist, and then an email arrives. “Just a few questions from our IT security team.” It rarely is just a few. The spreadsheet covers encryption, access control, backups and where the data lives, and it wants evidence for most of it. Some buyers use a recognised standard, such as the Cloud Security Alliance’s Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire or the SIG from Shared Assessments. Plenty write their own, and banks and insurers tend to be the most thorough of all.
A due diligence questionnaire, or DDQ, is the same idea from finance, legal and compliance, covering your accounts, insurance, ownership and policies on things like data protection and modern slavery. Expect a long one from a bank.
Neither is scored like the RFP, but either can stop a deal at the last minute. The answers also have to agree with what you said in the proposal. If the RFP response says the data stays in the UK and the security questionnaire says the backups are in Ireland, somebody on their side will notice and wonder what else doesn’t line up.
Which ones are worth your team’s time?
They don’t all ask for the same effort, and they’re not all equally winnable.
An RFI costs very little and can shape everything that follows. An RFQ for something complex that you’ve never discussed with the buyer is, generally, a price check. A private RFP from a buyer you already know is usually worth the fortnight it will take, and one from a buyer you’ve never spoken to deserves a harder look. A public tender is a lot of work, but at least the rules tell you how you’ll be judged. And once you’re shortlisted the security questionnaire is not optional, so it is worth having the answers ready before it arrives rather than writing them the week it does.
Scoring the bid or no-bid call
Most bid or no-bid decisions get made in a meeting, and most of those meetings go the way the loudest person in the room wants. That’s usually the seller, because it’s their number. The people who will have to write the response, deliver the project and support it for the next five years don’t get much say until it’s too late to matter.
A scoring matrix fixes that, mostly because of who fills it in and when. Everyone involved scores it separately, before the meeting, without seeing anyone else’s answers. The account executive, the sales director, pre-sales, whoever will lead the implementation and the bid manager all see different risks in the same deal. The sheet puts those differences on the table.
Most of the questions are ones this guide has already raised. Did we see this coming, or did it arrive cold? Is our team qualified, and do we have an edge over whoever else is bidding? How strong is the relationship, and does the RFP read like it was written around somebody else’s product? How much of the answer can we reuse? Do we have the people to do it properly? Can we meet their budget, and is the deal worth winning at that price? Each one is scored 1 to 4, and each score has a written description, so a 2 from pre-sales means the same thing as a 2 from the seller. On the relationship, a 1 might be a buyer nobody has met and a 4 that you’re already their supplier of choice.
Then the sheet does the arithmetic. Average each question across the team, average those for an overall rating and agree the thresholds before you score anything. A reasonable starting point on a 1 to 4 scale is 2.5 or above to go, under 2 to walk away and anything in between to review. Add a veto, so any single question averaging 1.5 or lower forces a review whatever the total says. A great opportunity with no budget is still an opportunity with no budget.
Go2 questions to discuss first
The most useful number on the sheet isn’t the total, though. It’s the gap. When the account executive scores the relationship a 4 and pre-sales scores it a 1, somebody knows something the other doesn’t. A gap of 2 or more on any question should flag it for discussion before anyone writes a word.
None of this makes the decision for you. What it does is make the team have the argument early and on the record, with the people who will live with the outcome in the room.
How Dajemano does this
Respond, the part of Dajemano that handles bids, takes in any of these, whether it’s an RFP, an RFI, a tender or a security questionnaire, and sets every question out in the same sections your team already works in. It drafts from answers your people have approved and sends what’s new to the expert who knows it, and every RFx gets its own bid or no-bid matrix for the team to score, beside the recommendation Respond makes from the drafted work. So that fewer arrive cold, Sense watches for the tenders, contract renewals and changes at a buyer that say one is coming, and Enable keeps what your team knows about each account and competitor in one place. Dajemano launches in 2027.