Enterprise 2.0 – SeekOmega.

com

Enterprise 2.0 – Collaborative

Networks
Request for Proposal (RFP)
FOR: ________________________
Examples (Intranet, Social Business Initiative, Solution, Extranet, Knowledge
Base, Community)

Feel free to adapt it for your own use and drop me a note at
mfidelman at kelmarpartners.com if you use the template or have
any questions.]

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TIPS: Anything in yellow highlight will need to be replaced or a choice will need to be made.

#2 SEE EXHIBIT A FOR A LIST OF ENTERPRISE 2.0 VENDORS

1. General Information
This section summarizes the General Information for the _________ Communities and
is summarized into the following categories:

• Purpose of the RFP

• RFP communications
• RFP timeline
• RFP preparation
• Vendor responses
• Effective dates of pricing
• Evaluation criteria
• Right to reject RFP responses

1.1 Purpose of the RFP

The purpose of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to establish the functional, technical
and operational requirements for a _________ platform and _______management
solution for _________.

TIP: This section should explain your high-level objectives. To develop this section of
the RFP, it is important to take a step back and ensure that your team has a full—and
shared—understanding of what you expect the project to accomplish. The more specific
you can be with your objectives, the more specific and more accurate your respondents’
proposals will be.

The contents of this RFP are proprietary and are not to be disclosed to third parties
without the express permission of _________.

The planned _________ solution will be a combination of:

• Primary
○
○
• Secondary
○
○

When we talk about building a solution, _________ is providing the infrastructure or

“playpen” and the initial spark for the solution to get started. While we can nurture
and guide the company to a certain degree, it would be a mistake to assume that we
can single-handedly ignite a solution on our own. We have to have the patience and

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conviction to let the solution grow and evolve in whatever direction the users want
them to grow. The solution will (or will not) be accessible from our website, but they
will have an identity, name and style that are (same/different) from the _________
website and brand.

<OPTIONAL> While the _________ customer component will be an important part of

our solution, it is just a small slice of the total addressable audience.

One of the most important parts to becoming successful with the solution will be to
continually provide fresh and new content. The expectation is that much of the
content will ultimately come from team members.

Finally, building the solution will take a significant commitment and dedicated
resources to manage and develop content for, and host (employees/guests) on the
site. Another important point to make is that the solution will evolve over time – from
both a content and adoption standpoint. The core infrastructure and initial content
need to be in place for the launch, but it takes time to build trust in the solution, and
to get members to begin contributing and actively participating in the solution.

We acknowledge that building the _________ solution will be a multi-year project.

At a high level, the types of content information planned for our solution include:
EXAMPLES
• “Hot off the press” Content (relatively short shelf-life – days or weeks)
○ Industry and other topical news
○ Microblogging
○ Blogs and columns
○ Discussion groups and forums (threaded conversations)
○ User editable wikis
○ Alerts and RSS news or blog feeds
○ Daily/weekly digest of new content/discussions
• “Library-Type” Content (longer shelf-life – months or years)
○ Articles and whitepapers – by _________ or contributed
○ Analyst reports
○ Webinars – real-time and archived
○ Podcasts and video
○ Links to other relevant content

Ideally, we want the solution to become a destination site where our

employees/customers come for valuable and topical content and to share insights with
other employees/customers.

1.2 RFP Communications

Please direct all communications and correspondence regarding this RFP to:

Name –
Title –
Address –
Email address -
Phone number –

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1.3 Timeline
RFP submission date - ____
Vendor proposal due date - ____
Vendor selection - ____
Vendor contract process - ____
_________ detailed plan with vendor - ____
Launch Solution - ____

1.4 RFP Preparation

All costs incurred in the preparation and presentation of a RFP will be absorbed by the
prospective vendors. In the event that modifications or additions to the RFP become
necessary, prospective vendors will be notified in writing. All supporting materials
submitted with the Proposal will become the property of _________ unless otherwise
requested by the prospective vendors at time of submission.

1.5 Vendor Responses

Prospective vendors are required to submit their proposals no later than ________.
All supporting materials and documentation must be included with the Proposal.
Proposals should be sent or emailed to ________. We may ask vendors to present
their proposals in person or by webcast to the _________ evaluation team.

1.6 Effective Dates of Pricing

Prospective vendors should state in writing that all furnished information, including
pricing, will remain valid and applicable for a minimum of one-hundred and twenty
(120) days from the date their Proposal is received by _________ and should submit
their best and final offers.

1.7 Evaluation Criteria

Prospective vendor Proposals will be evaluated using the following general criteria:
• Ability to satisfy functional business requirements
• Ability to satisfy technical and integration requirements
• Strategic partnering potential
• Cost

1.8 Right to Reject

_________ reserves the right to:
• Accept or reject any and/or all submitted proposals
• Request additional information from all prospective vendors at any time
• Negotiate a contract with the selected vendor(s)
• Include the vendor's RFP response in whole or by reference in the final contract
• Accept the proposal of any vendor at any time during the process and other
vendors may or may not be awarded the opportunity to further discuss their
proposals or demonstrate their solutions to the _________ team.

Therefore your response should include all information necessary for _________ to
evaluate your solution, pricing and contract terms.

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2.0 Requirements
This section summarizes the key requirements for the _________ Communities and is
summarized into the following categories:

• Solution strategy
• Infrastructure requirements
• Functionality requirements
• Ongoing management requirements
• Technology requirements
• Other requirements
• Cost requirements

2.1 Solution Strategy

We believe that getting the strategy right is an integral part of building our solution.
As part of your proposal, we would like you to include a description of how you will
help us strategize our solution and approach. This may be part of a bundled package
or priced separately. It is important to make sure that you are explicit in terms how
you can help us, a description of your qualifications and an estimate of the time/cost
necessary to help us finalize our strategy.

TIP: Once you have identified the main focus of the project, it is important to specify key
objectives and allow the vendor to provide a solution for each of the areas you have
identified. For instance, if the project focuses on project management capabilities, you will
need to detail the issues your organization is currently experiencing and any requirements
you have defined to solve those problems.

2.2 Infrastructure Requirements (suit to fit)

The key infrastructure requirements include:
• Platform
○ Provide a robust, fully encrypted, and hosted platform that provides
room to grow the solution and meets the other requirements detailed
below
○ Establish single sign-on and permissions rules
○ Implement and manage legal and intellectual property agreements for
access to content, member privacy
○ Establish service level agreements that are acceptable to _________
○ Document and train _________ personnel in administration and
management of site
○ Provide periodic training to _________ personnel as updates are made
to the platform or as new _________ personnel get involved with site
administration

• Strategy and planning

○ Drive completion of solution strategy plan
○ Create a comprehensive project plan
○ Develop a customized look and feel

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○ Build a membership recruitment plan
○ Design a launch plan (for marketing and PR)
○ Generate an ROI measurement plan
○ Develop solution rules for participation, posting, etc.

• Multiple sites
○ Support up to ___ solution sites
○ Enterprise search across solution sites
○ Separate URLS for each solution site
○ Separate look-and-feel for each solution site
○ Support different levels of members (i.e. guest, registered, employee
customer) with different permissions/privileges and access to content

• Scalability and Governance

○ Support up to ___ concurrent users
○ Support different restrictions for members (ranging from total blocking
to full access)
○ Support collaborative networking (i.e. professional profile, my favorite
files/links, photo, etc.)
○ Support for employee/user rating

2.3 Functionality Requirements (suit to fit)

The key functionality requirements include:

• Content types – we need to support the following content capabilities

○ Dashboard charting and gauges
○ Document and content libraries
○ Multimedia libraries for videos, podcasts and other multimedia
○ Discussion forums
○ Blogs
○ Wikis
○ Webcasts
○ Podcasts
○ Vlogs (video blogs)
○ Links
○ Realtime polls and surveys

• Project Management
○ Ability to manage tasks
○ Ability to set up project sites/pages
○ Ability to add team members to project sites/pages
○ Dashboard reporting on projects

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• Available metrics – we want to be able to measure the following metrics.

The metrics should be available in standard reports and in user definable
reports. The reports should be available online and printed or exported if
necessary:
○ Unique visitors by date and date range
○ Page views by date and date range
○ Session time by date and date range
○ Registered members and join date
○ Peak number of concurrent users (in live events)
○ Total number of users (in live events)
○ Repeat visits and Frequent visitors

• Customization requirements
○ Ability to update and program solution easily using java script, deki
script or php.
○ Ability to create new workflow forms (i.e. expense reports, travel,
requests) and pages on the fly

TIP: Customization
When it comes to customization, there are some key pieces of information that can help
you select the best partner for your solution. How does the respondent plan to develop
your set of solutions? Will they use mostly out-of-the-box templates, or will they architect
a custom-developed tool? Depending on your needs, some may propose using a
combination of these two approaches. Your RFP should include questions that will clarify
their experiences with respect to building solutions using both of these approaches.

• Data integration and mashups

○ Ability to integrate data from our ERP, CRM, MRP systems
○ Reporting – we need to mashup our ERP data with our CRM data to
show our sales team detailed customer payment information
○ Dashboards - Ability to chart real time data quickly

• Other requirements
○ Ratings - ability to rate content & users
○ Workflow – custom workflow
○ RSS feeds – RSS feeds for news, blogs and other content
○ Notification Alerts - alerts for content (users can set alerts for pages,
discussions, blogs and other content)
○ Subscriptions – ability for members to subscribe to any content on a
daily, weekly or other time basis of their choosing
○ Search – ability to search content by title and within documents or
discussions (Google-like search capabilities)
○ Enterprise search – ability to search across multiple instances of
solution
○ Email Posting - Ability to post to blogs and discussion groups by email
○ “What’s new” – easy way to find new content or discussions
○ Talkback – ability to add comments on content, etc.
○ Social sharing – one-click ability to share any content via email and
other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, de.lic.ious, etc.

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○ Administration – ability for our admin manager to perform most routine
administrative tasks such as setting permissions, making modifications
to most pages, etc.

2.4 Ongoing Management Requirements

The key ongoing management requirements include:
• Management
○ Provide a dedicated moderator to the communities to manage
conversations and actively enhance member experience – with the goal
of growing the communities and keeping the solution active and vibrant
(based on activity and new members/partners added)
○ Maintain and regularly check physical and virtual links
○ Manage and summarize user feedback – and incorporate feedback into
improving the site
○ Provide continuous programming and membership moderation
○ Provide solution training and demos to new/prospective members
○ Generate detailed solution reports and analysis of results

• Solution Marketing
○ Identify potential members partners and user groups to target,
including obtaining of email addresses
○ Invite potential users to join
○ Get people to join – driving awareness and attention
○ Encourage people to stay active and contribute
○ Manage the membership and partnerships
○ Create regular and periodic marketing campaigns to generate traffic,
awareness of solution and member/partner growth

• Content creation
○ Source new content (the majority of content must be from non-
_________ to give it an aura of success)
○ Build links to related sites, blogs, etc. (the onus of research and effort
for this task will be on the vendor – to be augmented over time by
_________ employees)

• Content management
○ Keep the content fresh
○ Prune and cull old or out-of-date content
○ Coordinate, kick start and prime discussions
○ Edit, review, upload and ‘censor’ materials and discussions, as
necessary

• Content Moderation
○ Please provide an overview of your moderation services (if any) and the
various pricing options

2.5 Technology Requirements

The key technology requirements include:

Provide us with information that cover these technical details: (if hosted)

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• Uptime and availability

• Backups
• Bandwidth
• Support access
• Privacy of data

2.6 Other Requirements

Are the any requirements that we missed? Please include ideas / topics / suggestions
that we may have missed that you believe would greatly enhance a solution
experience and/or be an area where you could provide significant value to the
members of the solution and/or _________ as the solution sponsor.

TIP: People and Roles

Finally, ask for information about the respondent’s proposed team structure and the key
roles it plans to fulfill in building your proposed solution. Respondents should provide a
high-level snapshot of their proposed teams and resources, including specific roles and
number of team members, as well as a basic reasoning behind their proposed team
structure. Gathering this information will provide you with a clear picture of exactly how
each respondent’s team will approach the project and whether it will fit your needs.

2.7 Cost Requirements

The initial proposal should outline a price quote and all pricing options available to
support the requirements identified in the RFP. The price quote should address a plan
for developing a solution and launching before the end of _____.
The price quote should include the amount and timing of the following:
• Upfront costs
○ How much?
○ What is included in the upfront costs?
○ How many hours/days are covered in the upfront costs?
○ What is the final deliverable?
○ What flexibility is available in pricing?
• Annual costs
○ What are the annual costs?
○ What is included in the annual costs?
○ How many hours/days per week are covered by this pricing?
○ What flexibility is available in pricing?
○ What ROI metrics can we expect?
• Payment options
○ Monthly, quarterly, etc.

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2.8 Other
Vendors should provide pricing data for any services not included as part of the
software or support purchase. These may include training, implementation support,
moderation, ongoing consultation, etc. This should include detailed rates for the
different levels and experience of consultants that may be needed on this
engagement.
Vendors should also be prepared to provide us with a list of reference-able customers
with similar background as our solution. You may include information about
reference-able customers in your response or include them in your presentation

Note: Some of this RFP is from an actual RFP developed by Tom

Humbarger thumbarger@yahoo.com who has kindly allowed us to
use and modify.

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Exhibit A: Forrester Wave 2009

Enterprise 2.0 Vendors

MindTouch Microsoft IBM Lotus
Jive Software Novell Central Desktop

Download the RFP Scorecard Tool

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