SharePoint RFP Guidelines

If your organization currently uses Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, planning for future application enhancements may be relatively straightforward. But, if you are unfamiliar with SharePoint’s full capabilities, you may find it difficult to articulate, in advance, the benefits your organization expects to achieve by implementing it. Writing a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a planned SharePoint project can be a tedious and daunting task.

To counter this uncertainty, it is important to look closely at your company’s needs and use that information to guide your prospective implementation partners. This will enable respondents to offer details and reasoning for their recommended solution and, ultimately, provide you with a proposal that satisfies your needs.

West Monroe Partners has prepared a helpful article, “Guidelines for developing a SharePoint Request for Proposal,” that offers some best practices for defining and documenting SharePoint needs. It also describes how to seek out the information you may need to measure and select a partner best suited for your project.

This article covers considerations for:

• Providing background and context for your project
• Defining needs
• Articulating the type of solution you want; for example, document management, portal/intranet, extranet, and/or collaboration
• Understanding and comparing vendors’ methodologies and approaches

Get a copy of the article and a sample SharePoint RFP.