Give your RFP the guardrails it needs to be effective
Now that you’ve got a clearer understanding of what the RFP process will look like—and have secured budgets to implement your project—you need to ask the following scoping questions:
This is all about taking stock of your current situation. If you don’t have any HR software solutions in place—other than manual tools, like spreadsheets—you are basically starting from scratch. But that’s not the case for every business. There’s a very good chance you’ve either grown out of your current solutions or simply haven’t been satisfied with them to-date. Either way, you need to do some sort of solutions audit.
There’s a fine line between ‘want’ and ‘need.’ This is your opportunity to put everything on the table and create a features wishlist. To get a solid brainstorm going, you need to deep dive into what’s missing, where gaps exist in your current solutions, and what features and functionalities are consistently being asked for at all levels of your business.
Of course, as HR leaders you probably have a clear sense of what your department needs from an HR software solution. However, other parts of the business may have different needs from your own that need to be taken into account here as well. So seize this opportunity to eliminate HR bias by soliciting input from other key stakeholders.
Not everything on your wishlist will make it to the ‘mandatory’ list. Be sure to prioritize which features and functionalities will drive the most impact and value across your entire organization. Building an RFP that aims to achieve a little bit of everything for everyone isn’t going to drive long-term success. You need focus.
Be sure to approach this process through the lens of both your business and employee priorities. This will give your RFP the guardrails it needs to be effective. It also doesn’t mean that you can’t include some of those nice-to-haves in the RFP as out-of-scope additions either. Vendors need to see what your growth trajectory looks like—and for all you know, they may be able to deliver on those extras at no extra cost.
A successful HR software RFP must be a collaborative and cross-functional process. Even though the HR team will likely be the biggest benefactors—and power users—of these solutions, the software you choose will likely touch everyone at all levels of the organization.
At this point, you’re probably wondering who is responsible for answering all these scoping questions and, more importantly, selecting a final HR software vendor when all is said and done.
As a general RFP best practice, you need to invite people from outside of HR to be a part of the core decision-making team. Knowing that every business is a little different, the stakeholders you ultimately choose to be a part of this team can and will vary. Either way, you’ll want to include people who not only represent different business units, but also come from different levels within the organization.
One of the most important players on this team will be your executive sponsor, who can help steer the process and solicit support from the senior leadership team. But you should have managers and even rank-and-file employees involved in this process as well. The goal here is to ensure your RFP team adequately represents the needs of your entire business.
Finally, you should empower the stakeholders within the RFP team to go back to their business units and colleagues to solicit input and feedback as well. Part of defining the scope of an HR software RFP is understanding where pain points exist in order to identify the right solutions to overcome them. This requires deep cross-functional collaboration.
