For many CIOs and Procurement leaders across UK enterprise, running a technology RFP feels like good governance.
In reality, traditional RFP processes often introduce unnecessary complexity, increase vendor manipulation risk, and slow down technology procurement cycles the exact opposite of their intended purpose.
After responding to hundreds of RFPs across enterprise infrastructure, SaaS platforms, and cyber security procurement exercises, one pattern is clear:
Most technology RFPs are longer than they need to be and less precise than they should be.
And that lack of clarity costs organisations time, money, and confidence. According to the 2022 State of Business Procurement Report, 40% of businesses exceed their budgets when sourcing new technologies. Much of that overspend can be traced back to poorly structured procurement processes.
If your technology acquisition strategy relies on outdated boilerplate templates and overly broad requirements, you’re not reducing risk. You’re increasing it.
The Illusion of Rigour: Why Longer RFPs Don’t Mean Better RFPs
Length is often mistaken for quality in technology procurement.
We recently reviewed an RFP where the executive summary alone ran to 12 pages. After reading it carefully, one question remained: What problem is the organisation actually trying to solve?
It was full of strategic language transformation ambition, innovation frameworks, future-state architecture, operational optimisation but when you stripped away the language, the core requirement was unclear.
When the problem definition is vague, vendors don’t compete on solution quality. They compete on interpretation. And that’s where procurement outcomes start to drift.
Precision vs Vagueness: The Engine Specification Problem
There’s a misconception in technology procurement that being precise means being biased. It doesn’t.
There’s a difference between being vendor-neutral and being vague.
If you need a 3-litre diesel engine delivering 400Nm of torque, say that. Don’t ask suppliers to propose “mobility propulsion solutions aligned to long-term transport transformation strategy.”
When requirements are overly abstract, suppliers interpret them differently, proposals become impossible to compare, commercial models vary wildly, and evaluation becomes subjective.
Precision doesn’t reduce fairness. It increases it. Clear requirements create better competition — and that’s a fundamental principle of good technology acquisition.
Why Boilerplate RFPs Reward the Best Bid Writer, Not the Best Solution
Many technology RFPs are built on historic templates. Sections are copied forward from previous procurement exercises. Legal clauses are inserted before technical clarity exists. Evaluation criteria are fixed before the real requirement is properly defined.
From the vendor side, the process becomes mechanical: bid teams optimise for scoring language, sales adds commercial positioning, legal mitigates risk, and technical nuance gets diluted.
You don’t end up rewarding the best solution. You reward the best bid writer.
For CIOs and procurement leaders trying to deliver measurable business value from technology investments, that should be uncomfortable.
The Binary Spreadsheet Trap: Why Yes/No Questions Fail
Another common issue in enterprise technology procurement is the 200-line Excel spreadsheet filled with binary “Yes / No” questions.
Does the platform support X? Yes / No.
Does the system integrate with Y? Yes / No.
Does it provide feature Z? Yes / No.
This approach helps no one.
Vendors tick “Yes” wherever possible often with caveats buried in footnotes. Procurement teams score responses numerically. But the context, limitations, and commercial implications get lost.
Binary answers create a false sense of comparability. Complex technology solutions rarely fit into 200 simplified boxes.
The better approach: if something matters, ask it clearly. If performance is critical, define how it’s measured. If integration is essential, specify the environment. Clarity beats spreadsheets every time.
Vendor Accountability: Stop Absorbing Risk That Isn’t Yours
One of the biggest weaknesses in traditional RFP best practice is failing to push performance risk back to the supplier.
Marketing claims are accepted in proposals but rarely formalised in contracts. And that gap is where organisations lose the most value.
For example, if a storage vendor claims 5:1 data reduction, make that a contractual commitment. If a cyber security provider promises reduced phishing click-through rates, specific threat detection accuracy, defined SLA performance, or automated response capability — then ask:
- How will it be measured?
- Under what conditions?
- Over what timeframe?
- What happens if it isn’t achieved?
Too often, technology RFPs gather impressive claims — but commercial agreements dilute accountability. That shifts delivery risk back to the customer.
Well-structured technology procurement processes do the opposite. They require quantified commitments, define measurable outcomes, align pricing to performance, and make vendor accountability explicit.
Crucially, they make that expectation clear in the RFP itself. If you want suppliers to stand behind outcomes, state that upfront. If a vendor genuinely believes in their solution, they should be comfortable committing to it.
Procurement should reduce risk not redistribute it through ambiguity.
Commercial Benchmarking vs Strategic Procurement: Know the Difference
There’s nothing wrong with running a commercial benchmarking exercise. But be honest about the objective.
If the incumbent solution is staying and you simply want pricing validation, structure the RFP accordingly: lock down the specification, remove interpretative freedom, and make evaluation criteria explicit.
Where organisations go wrong is trying to combine strategic transformation, architecture redesign, commercial benchmarking, innovation discovery, and contract renegotiation all in one procurement cycle.
That rarely produces clarity. It produces noise.
This is something we see regularly in VMware renewal negotiations, where the licensing landscape has changed dramatically and organisations need to separate the commercial exercise from the strategic one.
Why CIOs Need Vendor-Side Expertise in Technology Procurement
Most CIOs are balancing operational resilience, cyber security risk, talent shortages, legacy estate modernisation, board-level reporting, and digital transformation targets all at once.
Running a technically robust, commercially defensible technology RFP is a discipline in its own right. Procurement teams bring governance. Technology teams bring operational insight. But neither always has deep vendor-side experience.
And that perspective matters.
Understanding how suppliers structure pricing, position differentiators, and respond to ambiguity fundamentally changes how you write requirements — and how you evaluate what comes back. It’s the difference between accepting a proposal at face value and knowing exactly which claims to challenge.
With only 35% of digital transformation projects succeeding, the ability to structure procurement for real outcomes not just ticked boxes is a genuine competitive advantage.
What a Well-Structured Technology RFP Looks Like
Strong technology RFPs share common characteristics:
- A clearly defined business problem — not a wishlist
- Explicit scope boundaries that prevent scope creep
- Measurable success criteria tied to business outcomes
- Transparent commercial intent — if it’s a pricing exercise, say so
- Defined performance commitments with contractual backing
- Requirements that cannot be easily manipulated or gamed
When technology procurement is structured this way, clarification rounds reduce, evaluation becomes defensible, vendor lock-in risk decreases, implementation risk drops, and time to value accelerates.
Most importantly, confidence increases. Confidence that you’ve selected the right partner, that pricing is fair, and that delivery risk is controlled.
Final Thought
The goal of a technology RFP isn’t paperwork. It’s confidence.
If your current RFP process doesn’t give you confidence that you’ve selected the right partner, that pricing is fair, and that delivery risk is controlled — it may not be serving you as well as you think.
How C4C Helps You Get Technology Procurement Right
At C4C Group, we work alongside CIOs and Procurement teams to structure clearer, outcome-driven technology acquisition strategies. We complement internal teams — we don’t replace them.
Our leadership team has sat on both sides of the technology RFP table as enterprise vendors at Dell Technologies, EMC, and VMware, and now as vendor-agnostic independent advisors to UK enterprises. That experience means we understand how vendors think, how pricing models are constructed, and how ambiguity in requirements can distort outcomes.
We apply our IDEAL Framework — Identify, Decide, Execute, Adopt, Lifecycle to bring structured programme management to every technology procurement engagement. The results speak for themselves: clients typically see up to 30% cost savings on technology procurement by eliminating unnecessary purchases and holding vendors to measurable commitments.
If you’re planning a technology procurement exercise and want it to be simpler, sharper, and more defensible — let’s talk.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes a good technology RFP?
A strong technology RFP includes a clearly defined business problem, explicit scope boundaries, measurable success criteria, transparent commercial intent, and defined performance commitments. It should be precise enough to create fair competition between vendors while preventing manipulation through vague or overly broad requirements.
Why do most technology RFPs fail?
Most technology RFPs fail because they prioritise length over clarity, use vague requirements that vendors can interpret freely, rely on binary Yes/No evaluation methods, and don’t push performance risk back to suppliers. They often reward the best bid writer rather than the best solution, leading to poor outcomes and budget overruns.
How can CIOs improve their technology procurement process?
CIOs should define the specific business problem before writing requirements, be precise rather than vague in their specifications, require quantified vendor commitments with contractual backing, and separate strategic procurement from commercial benchmarking exercises. Bringing in independent vendor-side expertise can also significantly improve outcomes.
What is vendor accountability in technology procurement?
Vendor accountability means formalising marketing claims and performance promises into contractual commitments with measurable outcomes, defined conditions, clear timeframes, and explicit consequences for underperformance. It ensures that procurement reduces risk rather than redistributing it through ambiguity.
What is the difference between vendor-neutral and vague in an RFP?
Being vendor-neutral means not favouring a specific supplier — it doesn’t mean being imprecise about what you need. You can specify exact performance requirements, integration standards, and success metrics without naming a vendor. Precision increases fairness by creating a level playing field for all suppliers to compete on solution quality.