Wranglin’ an RFP – Part 1 of 3

8 Steps to Reduce Total Wireless Costs

In this four-part blog series, we’ll be cover 8 steps that are crucial to making the most out of your RFP.

A wireless RFP (request for proposal) to negotiate a new carrier agreement is a simple, yet very complex process.

Sound confusing? It is much like baseball. A fairly simple game – hit the ball, run the bases, score more runs than the other team, and hopefully win. However, there are also many variable complexities. For instance, when to put in a lefty pitcher, what pitch to throw (curveball, slider, change-up), when to steal a base – you get the idea.

That is a lot like the RFP process. Except instead of scoring runs, your ultimate goal is to get the lowest price for the best fit of services to your organization. The complexity: when and how to do it, how to interface with the carriers, what way to get the best industry standards for competitive advantages?

[message type=”info”]RFP Defined: Documentation of detailed requirements by a customer in order to receive, negotiate and implement vendor offerings[/message]

The goal here is to give a quick primer for any business organization who is beginning a wireless RFP implementation. We hate longwinded introductions as much as you do so let’s get started:

STEP 1 – Determine organization wants and needs

This can sometimes be one of the trickiest parts of an RFP renegotiation process: you want everything at the cheapest price. Well, that’s just usually not reality and therefore you need to be discerning about your non-negotiables versus your wants.

This is a very customized and organization-specific decision, but here are some real world examples:

1. Customer 1 didn’t care about individual liable discounts, but really wanted to get early termination fees (ETF) waived
2. Customer 2 didn’t care about ETF fees, but wanted a much better discount and flat fee replacement equipment
3. Customer 3 simply wanted free equipment and could live without a port-in credit

Each of these examples provides bargaining power and things that can be given up to align the real needs of the organization with the capabilities of the provider. Additionally, coverage often plays a key role in this decision as usually there is not one provider that can meet all the needs of every organization.

STEP 2 – Be reasonable about what to expect

We usually set the expectation that a well-done RFP will result in a 10-20% savings from what the organization is paying today. This is assuming the organization is already optimized and on competitive rate plans. If that is not the case, the savings are usually significantly greater.

Keep in mind some of this is difficult to quantify because there are many avoided costs in an RFP which actually never show up on a bill. For example, we have frequently negotiated a free or reduced cost for a text messaging plan. Because users did not have a text message plan before due to its expense, the organization can now add the feature free of charge and have the benefit of the productivity tool but not the cost. Here, the cost was avoided (getting a feature the organization is not paying for, therefore avoiding the cost in this case).

Also, check out our blog post for more on what businesses should pay for wireless.

Click here for Part 2 where we explain our exact strategies we use to get deep discounts and free stuff for our clients.