Question

A customer that you were recently introduced to is considering beginning an RFP process to replace the solution they’ve had for 8 years and that we acquired 2 years ago. What questions would you ask to better understand the situation? Please provide at least five examples of exploratory topics you would want to gather more data around, and how you would use that gathered information to craft a business storyline to convince the customer to drop RFP and continue working with our solution

Answer 1

The questions that we would ask to gather data around the concern are the following:-
1) What is the cost of procurement with the current solution ?

2) Whether the current procurement solution is in alignment with the strategic vision of the company ?

3) Whether the current procurement enables continual improvement ?

4) What is the overall experience with the current procurement and what are the scope of improvement ?

5) What are the major factors which are forcing you to chnageover to another procurement system ?

After gathering data on the above mentioned questions, it will be worthwhile to impress upon the customers the additional cost and time required to train the employees on the new process. Also this additional cost and time might nullify any cost savings envisaged as part of the new system. Also a new system will have initial hiccups and hence might lead to delays and errors to start with, so a better alternative would be to revamp the older system and tune it to meet the requirements of the organization to enable greater efficiency and cost effectiveness.