If you're following me on Twitter, you might have noticed that I've been talking about our Social Media RFP for our Services Marketing team.
The majority of the RFP solicitation, requests for engagement and questions and our notifications back to vendors was done thru Twitter.
We initially started with a list of 4 vendors... not a lot. And it was a very inside-out list. We generated a list based on folks we knew and had worked with previously. That wasn't good enough. So we put it out on Twitter and simply told folks we were issuing an RFP and would they want to receive it.
12 Social Media teams stepped to the plate and asked for the RFP. Contact info was sent to our procurement team, who, using email (hey we're working on it) issued NDAs and the RFP. 2 vendors contacted me via Twitter to say that after review they decided not to pursue the project.
RFPs were received on Feb. 20, 2009 and the team took this past week to read and develop a short list. We are in the process of notifying vendors who made the short list via Twitter.
Ok so that's what we did. But from an engagement perspective, I'm finding the use of Twitter to manage the RFP process to be as, if not a more efficient way to drive this process forward. Notifications of our intent were instantaneous as was feedback and requests to participate. When vendors needed us, they primarily contacted us thru Twitter.
What insight did we uncover from managing this business process via Twitter? Well, during our conversation today, one of the team members asked me what are some of the criteria I would use to make a final decision on a vendor. My response? In addition to all the standard criteria organizations use to evaluate vendors, Vendors have to be eating their own dog food - they've got to be using Social Media to market and engage with their customers. They need to be using Social Media to manage their own business. This is one instance where you can't just be a teacher.
If you want to follow updates on this process you can subscribe to this feed.
Very interesting.. RFP Request Process + Twitter = Good idea. Who would've known. I wonder how many companies would actually be willing (or even think) to try this. Great idea.
Posted by: Tanner Spaulding | February 26, 2009 at 11:33 PM
Fascinating approach. I wonder how you manage the level of transparency in a process like this as sometimes too much is detrimental.
Posted by: Warren Sukernek | February 27, 2009 at 01:34 PM
@Tanner.. thanx, its been illuminating, probabbly not many are using Twitter for this type of biz process.
@Warren, yes its raised some interesting issues, like "how come I didnt' get an RFP" was the most commmon. So yes, the transparency was overall a positive but also raised some issues I hadn't forseen
Posted by: Steve Mann | February 27, 2009 at 01:45 PM
RFPs submitted on Twitter, through FB, and in scavenger hunts do keep things interesting.
RT @dbcsg: Turkish Airlines create social media scavenger hunt, led you to find their RFP. thnkyou to @faris, found on your blog: http://bit.ly/FszpL
No one said new business was easy, at least now its obviously not for the faint of heart.
So how did your experience turn out? Did you find an agency worth your liking?
If not im happy to introduce Mediasmith.
In the meantime thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Michael Rosenfeld | July 09, 2009 at 07:45 PM