When organisations send out a request for quote (RFQ) or a request for tender, the goal is always to procure a supplier that can deliver outcomes.
When it comes to community engagement, these desired outcomes tend to go well beyond a set of practical, tangible deliverables.
In most cases, they also include strategic objectives that touch on less tangible concepts like building trust, (re)building relationships, maintaining integrity or reaching agreement.
This means that, when you’re assessing responses from suppliers, organisations need to determine which practitioners have the right experience, expertise and skills to design an engagement approach that’s robust, fit-for-purpose and effective.
THE EASY CHOICE ISN’T ALWAYS THE BEST CHOICE
by value for money, we mean quality – real impact – not just the lowest cost service.
Sometimes, the easy choice may very well be the right choice. However, this isn’t always the case. If you really want to get good value for money, it pays to assess proposals with a more critical lens.
And by value for money, we mean quality – real impact – not just the lowest cost service or the supplier that promises to engage the highest number of people.
Sometimes, this might even mean considering the proposal that didn’t 100% conform to your RFQ document, or the suppliers that asked you difficult questions or challenged elements of your project in a genuine and thoughtful way.
It also might mean that the methodology described in the proposal isn’t as detailed as you think it should be. It’s simply not possible to design an effective methodology after reviewing RFQ documents and having one or two conversations with the organisation.
How detailed should your methodology be at the RFQ stage of a project?
Discover more about what to put in your RFQ to ensure you get the best responses back from suppliers, and what to look for when assessing methodologies in proposal in this previous #MonthlyMyth: Prep the plan first.
SOMETIMES, THE RISK ISN’T WORTH IT
avoid the risks and the costs associated with a poor-quality process
We’ve been engaged by organisations to address engagement problems that were, in the main part, caused by choosing the supplier that promised the world but didn’t constructively challenge the organisation to ensure good process.
We’re always happy to help organisations that have found themselves in a tricky position – although we’d prefer to see engagement done well in the first place. That helps you avoid the risks and the costs associated with a poor-quality process.
SIGNS OF A GOOD PROPOSAL
If you want to select the best engagement team for the job, look out for proposals, practitioners or facilitators that:
provide honest insights and advice (don’t just tell you what you want to hear)
ask questions about your project that make you think and reassess your approach
thoughtfully challenge some elements of your project or request
provide ideas but also allow for adaptability – the ability to flex with the project as it evolves (everything can’t be known at the procurement phase)
demonstrate value that goes well beyond cost
considers long-term impacts and outcomes
look to strategically co-design a detailed methodology with you and your key decision-makers.
RED FLAGS TO WATCH FOR
If you’re assessing proposals and you’ve seen any of the following red flags, it may pay to ask yourself – can this supplier really deliver the best outcome for our organisation?
The supplier completely accepted every part of your proposed approach to engagement without any challenge or additional thinking.
The supplier didn’t ask you any thought-provoking questions about key strategic elements of your project, the drivers behind it or the history of the issues being considered.
The proposal sets a very detailed methodology in stone.
The proposal is by far the cheapest bid.
Possible risks were sugar-coated or not raised at all.
Grand promises were made about elements of engagement that may not be as important as others (i.e. promising to engage with thousands of people but not having a plan for making that engagement meaningful – read our previous myth on the ‘numbers trap’ here).
Shiny materials, branding and fancy collateral are waved around that aren’t underpinned by substance in the actual approach being put forward.
The suppliers are promising a deliberative process, but their proposal doesn’t demonstrate how they would meet the principles of a deliberative process. (Read our guide here).
How to avoid the quantity-over-quality trap in engagement
Learn about the risks involved in aiming for quantity without ensuring your process is meaningful, and discover a more effective strategy in this previous #MonthlyMyth: More is more.
How to know if the process being proposed by the supplier is ‘deliberative’
Understand the risks to your organisation of running a process that is deliberative in name only, and learn how to spot the signs in this previous #MonthlyMyth: Call it deliberation and it will be.
The contracting game can be challenging
We know contracting suppliers can be hard. You care about your project and the outcomes you want and need to meet. It’s also hard contracting people you haven’t used before.
In many ways though the partnership you build with your suppliers is almost as important, if not more sometimes, as a list of skills or how closely the supplier’s proposal aligned with your RFQ.
‘tough love’ and ‘critical friends’ will produce a genuine and robust engagement approach that will produce the strongest outcomes
It’s this partnership of ‘tough love’ and ‘critical friends’ that will produce a genuine and robust engagement approach that will produce the strongest outcomes for your project, organisation and community.
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