How do we describe the problem in a way that gets the best ideas put forward?

Procurement lead projects have resulted in poorer projects. The price is often haggled down and the expense of quality and the supplier and the customer do a dance where they pretend it is not the case. Another challenge is that the responses that are put forward are quite similar so you are making a selection from a set of similar options and discussing small differences when assessing the viability of the response. A lot of this results from the process to get the responses in. Let us examine a typical process.

The client creates a document that outlines the problem. There will be requests for the types of things they need to see in the response. Architecture diagrams, outline project plans, project team structure, references, financial details of the company, project and COSTS (remember this is procurement led and they will get a bonus on the amount by which they reduce the proposal). This will take a few people a few weeks to create, review and validate this document which can have more than 400 questions. Rarely less than 100. Therefore at the outset the client implicitly sizes the solution and will add other constraints e.g. must align with operational store, must meet future security requirements, must use current financial models. On one hand these might be good signposts to the suppliers but it also excludes suppliers who don't have certain technology skills. The irony is that the smaller companies are more likely to be using the leading edge technologies and the larger ones will be using standard technologies.

The size of the RFP means that a client will need a team to respond. Large suppliers will have some people who are available to do this. Often referred to as 'the bench' and these people will engage with the skilled people in the organisation who are busy with clients. Smaller suppliers rarely have a bench and may look at the RFP and decide that the expense of doing non-billable work is not worth the reward because RFPs are usually awarded to the usual suspects who become a self-selecting bunch.

In the end the client gets a similar set of responses from large suppliers and makes his choice the same way he does between a selection of wines at approximately the same price - sense of smell.

My recommendation, which I will explain in more detail, is that an initial RFP is smaller and that the client offers to pay a fee for the top 3 responses. It wouldn't make a dent in the costs of a large consultancy but might get some fresh ideas presented from the smaller suppliers.