In general, BCG doesn’t recommend custom programming; we use standard software for accounting, billing, and other office functions. But at times, custom development makes sense. Needing a better way to collect RFP requirements from clients and solicit vendor responses, we broke one of our own favorite rules and had it built.
Our developer, from Widespread Solutions (http://www.widespreadsolutions.com), used an application development tool called Ruby on Rails to create a webbased tool that houses over 800 features commonly required from construction companies, along with responses to each feature from the software vendor community. This allows us, our client, and a vendor to collaborate on a single database-making the entire process much more streamlined.
As a result, while the RFP process remains much the same for clients, vendors need respond only to new items that they have not yet addressed and review ones they’ve responded to negatively in the past. With technology questions and vendor background metrics in the database, items requiring a vendor’s response have been reduced from 800-900 to 30 or 40, allowing us to reduce vendor response time from three weeks to two. The developers even built in alert notification: When a new RFP is issued, the vendor is notified; when they respond, BCG sees that their response is submitted. The tool also saves response results and outcomes so vendors can track how they are doing on BCG selection projects, an important metric to them. equally important, we’ve shortened the time we need to evaluate responses-lowering costs for clients. We are thrilled with the results of this effort and continue to enhance the tool as time and funding allow. And feedback from vendors has been unanimous: “We love it!”
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