Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

I haven’t done much in the way of work based on RFP’s (Request for Proposal).  Are they all crazy like the one I’m looking at? 

The document doesn’t really detail out the site - just including a few specific functions it needs to have.  And it breaks the project out into a discovery phase and a production phase, so they expect some time to be spent doing audience confirmation, needs analysis, user/stakeholder interviews, determining required functionality, etc.

Yet - they want a budget that covers both the discovery and production.  A fixed fee, even.

So - we don’t know what we want, we want your help in figuring that out, but you need to tell us how much the whole thing will cost beforehand.

Do web development companies actually do this?

And the questions!  They stop just short of asking about your childhood and what situations from it might benefit the building of their site…

Oh - and gotta love this jewel:

The price is commensurate with the value offered by the candidate. As a non-profit institution, the _______ is able to to accept pro-bono service and recognize the provider to the full extent allowed by the Internal Revenue Service, including naming the provider within the web site and other collateral as an _______ supporter and partner.

So, if you build us a free site we’d let you put your name on it.

Wow.  Such a deal.

I’d be interested in hearing about other experiences in reading and responding to web site RFP’s….I’m betting there are some interesting ones out there.

And yes, if I end up taking part in a response to this RFP, you can expect this blog post to go away…if I end up passing on it I’ll post more snippets - there are quite a few good ones.

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. mikey on April 16, 2007

   run away

   or…

   just respond that discovery is a project unto itself, that happens before production and determines the scope and costs of that phase.

   if they don’t get it, THEN run away

2. Boyink (Author) on April 16, 2007

   Thanks Mike…we’re seeing if they’re open to the latter approach.  If not then I think you’re right - between the budget issues and just the sheer amount of time required to respond per the RFQ it’s just too much hassle.

   I wonder…should I start promoting RFP consulting as a business service?  I’d bet they will either get inundated with follow-up calls to clarify the RFP or just flat out ignored.  A few hours spent refining the RFQ by someone closer to the business would have helped everyone involved.

3. Erwin Heiser on April 17, 2007

   LOL. This reminds me of a publisher who contacted me to do their website for their children’s books: they wanted a separate gallery for each of their illustrators, a separate blog for each of their editors (both of course user updatable), a portfolio of their books and an on-line shop so people could order prints and books. When I wrote them a proposal they contacted me again saying my price was way too high. When I asked how much they had in mind for the budget they said, with no trace of irony: 300$.
   Run Mike, and don’t waste any time on these people :)

4. Boyink (Author) on April 26, 2007

   Well - we (two other companies in addition to me) finally decided to bail on putting a proposal together. 

   The company who issued the RFP said they were open to a bid with a range of costs vs. a fixed price, but in the end they just wanted way too much information in the RFP reponse to make it worth putting together, especially in light of how big the job looked to be.

   At some point I’ll post excerpts from the RFP—in hopes of educating future people on how *not* to do it.

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