Request for information

A request for information (RFI) is a written ask sent to the market when you do not yet know what you want to buy. It collects capabilities, rough prices and delivery options so you can shape a real requirement. No award follows.

That last line carries the weight. An RFI is market research with a reply form attached, and the condition that makes it the right instrument is simple — you cannot yet write the specification.

A request for proposal sits one step later. It asks suppliers to propose an approach to a problem you have already framed, and a contract can follow it.

A request for quotation sits later still. It asks for a price on an item specified down to the unit, and the price usually decides the winner.

Buyers reach for an RFI before a first strategic outsourcing decision, when the field of possible partners is still rumour rather than a list.

Nothing about the exercise is casual. A serious RFI takes a fortnight to draft, three weeks in the market and a week to read, and it saves you from writing a specification against a market that does not exist.

Key takeaways

• An RFI asks what exists in the market. Nobody bids, and nothing is awarded at the end of it.
• Use one while the requirement is still forming. If you can write a specification today, you have outgrown it.
• Replies are information rather than offers, so no supplier can be held to a figure given in one.
• The output is a shortlist plus a budget range you can defend to finance, not a signed agreement.

How it works

You send a short, open set of questions to every supplier who might plausibly serve you. Answers come back in your format, you read them side by side, and the requirement gets written afterwards instead of before.

Keep the question set short. Twelve questions get answered by the people who know the answers. Forty get handed to a bid team — and come back as marketing.

Ask everyone for the same shape of answer. Free text reads well and compares badly, which is why the format belongs to you rather than to the vendor.

An RFI sits upstream of everything in procure pay p2p — no requisition, no purchase order, no invoice, just questions and the answers to them.

Say what happens next, inside the notice itself. Suppliers put real hours into a reply, and the ones worth having will remember whether you told the truth about your timetable.

Firms with no sourcing function often bring in outsourcing consultants to draft the question set. That costs less than running the whole exercise twice.

Read the non answers too. A supplier who skips three questions and answers the fourth with a case study has told you something useful about how it will behave later.

Score the replies lightly, if at all. An RFI shortlist is a judgement about who to invite next, not a ranking anyone has to defend, and heavy scoring invites a challenge you cannot win.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) is blunt about the limits. It states that responses to these notices are not offers and cannot be accepted to form a binding contract.

Examples

Public buyers publish in the open rather than emailing a chosen few. SAM.gov, the official United States government system for contracting, lets anyone research and engage in federal contracting and view entities doing federal business.

A mid sized insurer testing offshore claims support issues an RFI across Philippine and Indian delivery markets. It asks about headcount availability, licensing experience and shift coverage, and it names no scope at all.

A hospital group weighing outsourced patient scheduling asks fourteen questions about clinical systems and data handling. Four usable replies arrive from firms it had never heard of, which is exactly the point.

A local council mapping outsourced waste collection runs an RFI purely to establish how many firms hold the right licences in its region. The answer turns out to be two — and the whole strategy changes.

A retailer planning a finance back office move uses an RFI to choose between full business function outsourcing and keeping the ledger in house. The replies push it toward the second.

Related terms

• Transition plan outsourcing: the plan that moves work to the supplier you eventually pick, long after the RFI closes.
• Co sourcing: a split delivery arrangement where you keep part of the work, often an option an RFI first surfaces.
• Strategic outsourcing: the decision an RFI informs, covering which capabilities leave the building and why.
• Vendor: the party answering your questions, and the relationship an RFI is quietly auditioning.
• Outsourcing consultants: advisers who draft and run the exercise when you have no sourcing team of your own.

FAQ

Is a request for information legally binding?

No. Replies are information rather than offers, and the FAR states they cannot be accepted to form a contract. Procurement fairness rules still apply, so treat every reply with the same care.

How long should an RFI stay open?

Two to three weeks suits most service markets. Shorter windows quietly favour the suppliers who already know you, which defeats the purpose. Publish the closing date and keep it.

Can I award work straight from an RFI?

No award follows an RFI. If you want to buy, run a request for quotation for a fully specified item, or a request for proposal for a framed problem.

How many suppliers should I invite?

Invite broadly, because one extra reply costs you a few minutes of reading. Fifteen to twenty five is common in offshore services markets.

What does a good RFI reply look like?

It answers your questions in your order and gives a price band rather than a precise figure. It also names the constraints the supplier will not move on.

Map the supplier field in the Outsource Accelerator directory before you write a single question.