What do Localization Buyers value when evaluating an RFP?

The Language Service Provider (LSP) role is one of the most important in the Localization industry.

They are the essential building blocks of excellent content localization. As such an important piece, I think it is interesting to deepen in the following paragraphs on how we can evaluate the vendor that can be the best partner for a Language Service Buyer (LSB) to work with. 

There are many articles about best practices on how to prepare an RFP, but information about how to evaluate them is scarce.

In the following paragraphs, I want to go deeper into how a buyer can evaluate the RFPs received

What's an RFP?

 The request for proposal process effectively identifies vendors capable of providing a needed Localization service. After you kick off the RFP, LSPs will provide proposals detailing their products and services so you can pick the one that best suits your needs.

Evaluating Responses to Your RFP

An RFP process is long, from the moment an LSB decides they need help with their Localization strategy until they find themselves reviewing the different bids, weeks or months, in many cases, have passed. I remember an RFP procurement process I was involved in a few years ago in which the process took practically the whole year. We started the call for RFP in March, and the account winner was decided shortly before Christmas. It was a long process in which there were many responses to analyze. And that is the first aspect we must keep in mind; we must have a consistent approach to analyzing the responses received.

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 1.-Quality of the answers

One of the areas that I find most striking when reviewing RFPs is whether the response is customized or looks more or less like a copy/paste of other RFPs that the LSP may have recycled from other proposals.

A generic or superficial response is not a reason to definitively discard the LSP from the list of potential collaborators, but it certainly sends a bad vibe. As they say, you only have one chance to make a good first impression, and standard, not custom responses will not make a good first impression. On the contrary, a response that considers the client's pain points and explains how you will help them overcome that pain point is sending a clear statement of intent.

2.- Timeliness

Every RFP will include a timeline with key dates to keep in mind throughout the process. LSPs who are engaged from the outset, asking questions, requesting clarification, and, of course, providing what needs to be provided when it needs to be provided is an excellent sign of engagement.

3.-Culture fit

When evaluating the supplier we will work with, we should pay close attention and assess if we seem to have a good vibe, a good DNA match, and shared values. We are going to spend time together. We will spend time nurturing a relationship, so a good fit between buyer culture and provider culture is critical.

 4.- Technical capabilities/resource availability

It is essential to pay attention to this area as it will be of vital importance in determining whether the vendor being evaluated can scale up and down as needed. Resources availabilities, whether "human" or "technological," will play a key role in executing the client's work; therefore, answers that show flexible and scalable models are definetely on the right track. An important aspect to consider in the technical capabilities category is ensuring that the vendor explains in detail the advantages of their tech stack and how it will integrate into the customer's ecosystem. This is also an excellent time to ensure that the buyer's content will remain easily exportable and that it is not "locked in" to a proprietary LSP system.

5.- Price

Price is not everything, but it is a determining factor in deciding the balance on one side or the other. When evaluating the pricing table, it is important to understand potential hidden costs, e.g., is PM cost included, or is it a percentage fee to be added to the total?

Understanding what's included in translation is fundamental when making an RFP assessment.

 6.- Quality

I personally do not spend a lot of time reading the paragraphs that have to do with the quality of the service provided. The reason? Every response received from every vendor usually boasts that they have a very high linguistic quality, which is why I have never chosen a proposal because the RFP says that the linguistic quality is high. Personally, to check the quality, I prefer to reach out to my LinkedIn contacts and look for who can give me references for the work of the LSP I am evaluating. On paper, all LSPs look good, so checking their performance among my colleagues is what has worked best for me.

RFP weighted scoring

Once we have defined the main areas we want to evaluate in our RFP, the next step we can consider is to create a weighting scorecard. This scorecard will help us to shortlist the number of candidates. A scorecard is a table in which we assign a weight to each criterion.

For example, based on the categories described in the previous paragraphs, your RFP criteria might include the following scoring areas

Weighted scoring prioritizes the criteria

• Timeliness - 15%

• Culture fit - 20%

• Tech and resources availability/scalability - 30%

• Price - 20%

Weighted scoring prioritizes the most important criteria, so be sure to give more weight to the most relevant to your business.

Summary

Evaluating RFP responses can be pretty cumbersome if you are not clear about which areas are most important to you or if you are not clear about how apple compares to apples. Choosing the important categories, as we have seen during this blog post, and defining weight points are a couple of tactics that can help you greatly in choosing the partner that best suits your needs.