Sourcing events that actually get finished

An RFI gathers information when you do not yet know the market or the options. An RFP asks suppliers to propose a solution when the how is still open. An RFQ asks for a price when you already know exactly what you want. Using the wrong one is a common cause of unusable responses.

Both exist, and they are easy to confuse. Loopio, Responsive and Qvidian help suppliers answer RFPs. Jaggaer, Fairmarkit, Ivalua and similar help buyers run them. If you are issuing the RFP, the sell-side tools are not for you regardless of how the search results look.

Build the document from your template, research and qualify the supplier list, issue the event, run the question window fairly, chase suppliers who go quiet, and normalise the responses into a comparison. Everything up to but not including the decision.

No. We prepare the comparison against criteria you set and flag gaps and non-compliances. Scoring and award stay with you. An offshore team should not be choosing your suppliers, and we would not take that work if you offered it.

A fixed fee per event, priced on complexity: how many suppliers, how technical the requirement, and how much documentation is involved. We quote before starting, and there is no retainer unless you want one.

Typically four to eight weeks from scoping to comparison, most of which is time suppliers spend responding rather than time we spend working. Compressing it below that usually means fewer or worse responses, not a faster result.

Yes, and we prefer to. Your document format, your evaluation criteria, your terms. We are running your process, not importing ours, which also matters if you are ever audited on it.

It can draft one, and many teams already do. Deloitte's 2025 Global CPO Survey found RFI, RFP and RFQ generation is the second most common generative AI use case in procurement, at 42.33 percent. Drafting was never the hard part. Getting twelve suppliers to respond properly, on time and in a comparable format still is.

That is the single most common failure and it is mostly about persistence. We chase on an agreed schedule, escalate through a second contact where we have one, and tell you early if a supplier has effectively withdrawn so you can decide whether to extend or proceed.

Yes. Jaggaer, Coupa, SAP Ariba, Ivalua, Zycus, Scanmarket, Prokuria and others. If you do not have one, events run perfectly well on email and a structured spreadsheet, and for most mid-market volumes that is genuinely enough.

Questions are logged and answers circulated to every bidder, deadlines apply equally, and the audit trail is kept with the event. Where public sector probity rules apply we work to them. Fairness is not just ethics here, it is what makes the responses comparable.

We can structure and challenge it, but the requirement has to come from the people who will live with the outcome. A specification written by someone who does not use the thing being bought produces proposals nobody wants.

Access is scoped by you, granted to named people, and revoked through your own leaver process. We contract on standard clauses, name every sub-processor, and work to GDPR, UK GDPR, PIPEDA, the Australian Privacy Principles and Saudi PDPL. Commercially sensitive bids are handled under confidentiality terms that survive termination. ISO 27001 alignment is in progress and SOC 2 Type II is on the roadmap.

If you run a couple of events a year and have a buyer with capacity, yes, and it will be cheaper. This service earns its place when events keep slipping because nobody has the time to chase, not when you simply want an extra pair of hands occasionally.

That is how most clients start. One event, fixed fee, and you judge it on whether the comparison you get back is genuinely usable.