Response from: Mike Pollock    (05/08/06 3:20pm)

Speaking as a vendor I would say that checklists are only useful in conjunction with conversations with the vendor.

Over long, over complex or over simplified RFI's are extreemly time consuming for both the purchaser and the vendor.

Often RFI's are written by mulitiple departments and will contain the same question multiple times.

The questions are most likey to be expressed as 'can software do this' not as 'we need to acomplish this... how does the software allow us to do it?' which means that a vendor has to use 'yes but' in most of the responces.

These problems could easily be resolved by having a conversation: The purchaser identifies the business requirements (in a excel checklist), advances it to the vendor and arranges a meeting if the vendor thinks they can meet the business requirements. At the meeting/ conf. call the vendor and purchaser discuss the issues and then fill out the 'hows' in the spread sheet.