Most CSPs and vendors say the RFP is 'no longer fit for purpose'

There is overwhelming support – both from CSPs and their technology suppliers – for a new approach to procuring new technology, systems and services. While the traditional request for information (RFI) and request for proposal (RFP) remains the tried and tested approach for most large technology procurement, the telecoms industry is transitioning to a partnership model to benefit from innovative new technologies and approaches, and to make decisions and deploy new capabilities more quickly.

TM Forum’s most recent Digital Transformation Tracker survey, conducted in the period June to August 2018, asked CSPs and vendors to choose between three statements to best describe their view on the RFI/RFP process.

Unsurprisingly perhaps – after all it is the CSPs that hold the trump cards in transitioning away from the RFP process – vendors are most convinced of the need to embrace new approaches, with fewer than one in five agreeing with the statement that the RFI/RFP “is tried and tested and is still the best procurement approach for the vast majority of our requirements”. For vendors such an approach ties up a huge amount of resources for a considerable period of time.

But knowing what the new procurement approaches should be is a different matter altogether, with only one in eight CSPs and one in five vendor respondents stating that they are already adopting new approaches. TM Forum this month launches a new research program Reinventing procurement for the 2020s, which will explore the most viable alternatives to RFI/RFP from across the global telecoms and digital media landscapes. If you would like to get involved in the project, email Mark Newman at mnewman@tmforum.org.

For more about the CSP-supplier relationship, see Digital Transformation 3: Why network transformation is so difficult?