Most local governments opt to purchase an off-the-shelf customer relationship management (CRM) solution to help manage the tremendous volume of data generated by a centralized customer service system.  If a community readiness assessment points toward a local government pursuing this route instead of working with a home-grown system, most will need to develop a request for proposals (RFP) and will need to work with vendors in the process. Given that there are literally hundreds of CRM solutions available, how can local governments insure that they receive quality proposals and not be overwhelmed with proposals that don’t make the grade?

The City of Philadelphia and its Philly311 Contact Center faced this exact issue when they determined that the City required a new more robust and flexible CRM solution.  The popularity of Philly311 had grown considerably over the years and several of the Mayor’s strategic goals for the City centered on providing world class customer service to Philadelphia citizens. 

The City began its search for the right CRM solution by first taking stock of what it needed in a new system.  Representatives from throughout the City’s service departments participated in an extensive exercise to define requirements of the new system.  A centralized repository process was developed for general requirements such as the desired format for entering service requests and the ability to generate data reports as well as technical requirements such as a system’s ability to integrate with existing work order management systems and its ability to access GIS data and use it for address verification.

Once the City had a clear idea of what its needs from a new system involved, these requirements became the foundation of its RFP.  A subset of the requirements—the core requirements—determined whether a proposal met the City’s minimum criteria or not.  By taking the time to think through and discuss needs before developing its RFP, the City created a self-selecting means for vendor management.  Simply put, the stringent requirements list encouraged only vendors who knew their product would met those requirements to apply. 

While creating a detailed requirements list upfront does take additional time, the pay-off comes further down the line when the proposal evaluation process begins and the evaluators have quality proposals to reviews.