Question

When soliciting information from sellers, buyers use numerous documents including Requests for Proposals (RFP) and Requests for quotations (RFQs). That sounds like the same thing.

What is the difference? Why choose 1 over the other?

Would you send either to a vendor who is not an approved vendor? Why or why not?

Answer 1

A request for proposal (RFP) can be seen as a document that asks for the proposals which are commonly done with the help of a bidding activity by any organization that is willing to procure the commodity, asset, or services from the potential supplier to present their business proposal.

The RFP should be commonly be used in case of a complex project that needs a great deal of technical information and there is a need or the hard data for any analysis and comparison and thus it needs a formal proposal from the probable suppliers. This is quite useful when it is important to compare the responses and vendors on the basis of the facts

A request for quotation (RfQ) is mainly used in the business activities wherein a certain business organization or the public organization request a quote for buying certain product or number of products or service from a supplier. This is the first step of RFP.

RFQ is sent to any vendor who can supply the product or services sought but the RFP is commonly sent only to the approved supplier or vendor list as it is a more detailed process and includes a number of steps.

The focus of RFP is on to have the best project while RFQ I focused to have the best price

RFP is used when the company wants to have the details of the statement of work for a project, on the other hand, RFQ is used when the company wants to negotiate on pricing