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Writing a Voice RFP That Vendors Can Answer Honestly
A request for proposal is supposed to make offers comparable. Most voice RFPs achieve the opposite: they produce documents of similar length that are impossible to compare, because the requirements were written as aspirations rather than as measurable statements. Vendors respond to aspiration with marketing, and the evaluation then turns on presentation quality. This article describes a structure that produces answers you can weigh, and questions that separate capability from compliance.
Separate Mandatory From Desirable
The most useful single decision in an RFP is to mark every requirement as mandatory or desirable and to mean it. Mandatory requirements should be few and genuinely non-negotiable, because each one is a reason to reject a response. Desirable requirements should be scored. When everything is mandatory, vendors either overstate compliance or decline to bid, and both outcomes reduce the value of the exercise.
| Section | What belongs there | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Current estate | Quantified inventory, call volumes, sites | Narrative description with no numbers |
| Mandatory requirements | Few, measurable, with evidence required | Long lists that no product satisfies fully |
| Scored requirements | Weighted, with a defined scoring method | Weights added after responses arrive |
| Integration needs | Named systems, protocols, and data flows | General statements about integration |
| Commercial | Pricing structure, term, and assumptions | Asking for a total price with no scope |
Ask Questions That Reveal Capability
A yes or no question about a feature produces a yes. A question about behaviour under constraint produces information. Asking how a platform handles a mid-call session expiry, or how a failover behaves during a busy hour, or what a vendor does when a requirement cannot be met as specified, gives responses that can be compared and that predict what working with the vendor will be like.
- Require evidence for mandatory claims: documentation, reference sites, or a demonstration
- Ask for the same three months of sample invoicing from every bidder
- Ask each vendor to state what they cannot do, and score the honesty
- Include a scripted scenario walkthrough rather than a feature demonstration
- Ask who performs support and what the escalation path looks like
Score Before You Read the Responses
Deciding the weights after seeing the offers guarantees an outcome shaped by the offers. Setting weights first, with a defined scoring scale and a rule for how a mandatory failure is handled, produces an evaluation that can be explained to anyone, including an auditor. It also shortens the evaluation, because requirements that turn out to be unweighted can be dropped rather than debated.
The Demonstration Is the Real Test
A scripted demonstration using your own scenarios reveals more than any written response. Write the script from the tasks your staff actually perform: a transfer during a busy period, a failover, a move and change, an after-hours route. Vendors who can perform these confidently in front of you are describing capability; vendors who cannot are describing intentions.
Redstone Approach
Redstone responds to voice requirements with documented platform capability rather than feature claims, and we are explicit where a requirement needs a third-party component or a different deployment model. Our technical responses name the platform model, the interfaces involved, and the limits that apply, so that evaluation can rest on facts that can be verified in a demonstration.
Redstone Systems, Inc. founded in Delaware, USA in December 2002, has been the ODM vendor for many well-known communications companies, serving the Southeast Asian market. In 2020, Redstone Systems will begin to return to the North America market with its self-developed brand.
Redstone has a complete product line of intelligent voice gateways, providing IP-PBXs, analog VoIP gateways (FXS/FXO), digital VoIP gateways (E1/T1), border appliances, and session boundary controllers (SBCs).
With advanced technology in digital signal processor (DSP), speech coding and speech processing, as well as efficient operational tools such as cloud remote management, auto provisioning, Redstone gateways are widely used in markets of enterprise communications, cloud communications, call centers, operators’ IMS/SIP trunks, bringing users friendly, efficient and reliable communication experience.
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