Seeing this is London, we can offer you a n nice broad price range. We can offer you a grotty little one-bedroom in the middle of nowhere for about £50K. Or we can get you a mansion on Hyde Park for about £50 million. However, seeIng I’ve got 10 pages in my RFP response, I’ll also squeeze in an option for a two bedroom flat that is fairly central for £500K and this lovely large family home in Zone 1 for £5 million. Hope that helps. I’ve covered 4 orders of magnitude of budget for you. I hope I’ve come out cheaper than the other estate agents.

I am assuming that only one of these houses if vaguely close to what you had in mind. Oh how I wish you’d told me you had a ballpark budget of between £300K and £800K. It could have saved us both a lot of time and effort ….

There is an exception to be made for those government organisations that need to know whether the project costs will require a formal national or even European Union tender. In that case it is advisable to indicate and require costs to stay below the limits.

Here’s an updated transcript of your estate agent conversation with a subtle change to only the final sentence:

You: “I want a house”
Estate Agent: “Excellent. Any locations in mind? How many bedrooms? Are schools important? Near public transport?”
You: “Yeah, they’re all important. The more bedrooms the better”
Estate Agent: “Okay, we’ll do a broad search. What kind of budget do you have?”
You: “Now that would be telling. Can you instead tell me what price range you can offer?”.

Sounds fair enough to me, in particular if the buyer wants to compare estate agents.

Can I add another one which might be controversial – give an idea of your budget. Just a broad range will do, but it helps the vendor/SI tailor the solution. Imaging walking into an estate agent and having this conversation:

You: “I want a house”
Estate Agent: “Excellent. Any locations in mind? How many bedrooms? Are schools important? Near public transport?”
You: “Yeah, they’re all important. The more bedrooms the better”
Estate Agent: “Okay, we’ll do a broad search. What kind of budget do you have?”
You: “Now that would be telling. But make sure you give me the best price you can on the house you pick for me”.

Sounds a bit ridiculous to me …

Some customers become obsessed with a forensic examination of platform functionality during the tender process, when the question of whether or not you trust the software vendor and the implementation partner is just as important as the CMS platform.

The short tender approach is interesting. I do find that many tenders turn into an extended “check-list”, listing every conceivable functional requirement without any prioritisation. This isn’t effective as every CMS vendor has some means of addressing checkpoint-style questions. A lot of tenders could be condensed down to a few key areas with an emphasis on “how” functionality can be delivered rather than “if” functionality is supported.

Adding to “Don’t just select a CMS. Select a system integrator with it”. I think if an IT educated customer already made up its mind then it is advisable for the customers to do background check if the service providers really have the expertise and experience in a particular CMS. Valid case studies in the proposal are one such way of knowing this.

Agreed, scoping exercise is very much essential. If the customer has few existing products, which they want to be integrated with, then it should be clearly communicated in the tender and customer should ask for some technical proof if the integration works. Be it a proof of concept or an assurance from the product vendor.