For businesses of every size, time is money and fast solutions are always in high demand. This is even truer when you are a freelancer or small business owner. Most businesses still look to RFPs for their vendor search, but this can be cost prohibitive for freelancers and small businesses. RFPs are the embodiment of waste and bloat in the system, and they often provide no actual value to the process. The truth is, the RFP just doesn’t fit in with modern business operations.
According to a case study by New Boston Creative, just one RFP takes dozens of hours of draft response time, weeks or even months of finalist research, and on average vendors spend $5,000 before even winning the bid. For the 17% of businesses who deal with up 21 RFPs for months, the time, money, and creative efforts that go wasted in the process are astronomical. For freelancers and small business owners, going through this process is just not possible.
So what’s the alternative? Working with freelancers on small projects and getting word of mouth recommendations from others who have worked with them before is just as safe of an option for most projects. The next generation of RFP responds to the growing need for fast and reliable solutions. Proof of Value, or POV, shows itself as a streamlined and updated version for RFPs and ensures that projects are done right before they even begin. Based on the information measurement theory, the predictability of success (and of course errors) are weighed, effectively replacing RFPs with an information and performance-based standard.
Ready to dump the RFP in your business for an upgrade? Here’s how. This infographic details the modern state of RFPs, how they inhibit meaningful business growth, and what alternatives there are to reaching new vendors.
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