Communication is critical during the RFP process – without good communication, poor decisions are made, and time and resources are wasted as non-relevant parties are accidentally looped into the process, relevant parties are given incorrect or unclear instructions, or activities are unnecessarily repeated when less than all parties are looped into the progress of the process. Thus, communications need to be accurate and clear, transparent, trackable, streamlined, and unified.

1. Are Communications Accurate and Clear for All Parties?

For communications to be accurate and clear, they should be concise, timely, and complete – that is, they direct the recipient parties on the next steps to be taken with a “call to action”, rather than being an open-ended statement with no instructions to the recipient parties on how to proceed. Moreover, in addition to making sure that communications are only going to the correct parties – this avoids confusion from non-involved parties as to how or whether they need or should respond to communications that shouldn’t have gone to them in the first place – communications should foster good continued decision-making and follow-up action.

2. Is the Communication Process Transparent?

In addition to accuracy and clarity, the communication process should also be transparent. A communication process that is transparent means that communications are going to all the necessary stakeholders in the RFP process or whatever process is being discussed. A transparent communications process also allows all parties to ensure that all the necessary stakeholders have signed off on all the decisions – this avoids situations where multiple sufficient, rather than necessary, decision-makers that are collaborating on a process are unaware when decisions have been made. Again, communications should be transparent to all the recipient parties such that they understand the causes and intended goals of communicated instructions.

3. Are Communications Auditable and Trackable?

When speaking of your communications being “auditable” and “trackable”, it means not only that communications are traceable to the originating party, but also that decisions that are made through the communication process are traceable to the responsible parties. The goal of auditable and trackable communications is to reduce or eliminate finger-pointing and assignment of blame if things go wrong with the RFP process. If your communication is auditable and trackable, you should be able to track down work instructions to determine who gave the instructions, who the instructions were given to, and were the instructions understood (were there follow-up questions and how were they answered?)? An auditable and trackable communications process should also allow you to determine what decisions were made, who made the decisions, and the thought-process or reasoning behind those decisions.

4. Do Communications Avoid the “Telephone Tag” Problem?

Ideally, your communications should avoid or eliminate the “telephone tag” problem, where parties trade messages – whether it be phone calls, emails, or texts – to reach one another to discuss an issue. Communications methods should instead allow parties to discuss and come to a resolution on an issue without the need to be simultaneously communicating with one another. Or, if simultaneous communication is necessary or desirable, the process should enable parties to connect with one another with the minimum of back-and-forth trying to reach one another or schedule a time to communicate.

5. Is Communication Unified and Centralized?

In the end, do your communication procedures during the RFP process improve the clarity of work of the various parties involved in the RFP process. All parties should be part of the same communication process, should be looped in to all communications, and should understand the effect and importance of each communications. This will help all parties understand what exactly is going on during the RFP process and are working in lock-step toward the same goal. The end-goal of a centralized, unified communication process is to reduce quality incidents, cost overruns, and focus parties on the goals of the RFP process.