This is all prepared and cooked-up data. Nothing to do with actual processes in any IT company. Please don't relate.

1. RFP Handling in an IT Company
A case of Tata Consultancy Services
Nirav Khandedia 12030242017
Neha Patnayak 12030242016
Rajabala Gnanasamy 12030242020
Neha Chauhan 12030242018
Akhil Mohammad 12030242019

2. Disclaimer
• This is all fake data, nothing to do with TCS or
any other IT company actually. Please don’t
relate with actual.

3. Questions
• Select IT company of your choice and answer
below questions in its context.
▫ How does an IT Company receive the RFP?
▫ How does an IT Company send the RFP?
 Which are the teams involved?
 Formal process generally being followed for the response.
 How Go - No Go Decisions are taken?
 How estimations are prepared?
▫ How much percentage of business is based on RFP selected IT
Company?

4. RFP Handling
• The company selected for the study of RFP
handling process is Tata Consultancy Services
(TCS).

5. How company receives an RFP?
TCS receives the RFP through various channels/ways
• Sales Team:
▫ TCS has its sales office in India at Mumbai.
▫ TCS has APAC region sales head office in Singapore
• RFP monitoring tools
▫ TCS uses various RFP monitoring tools and has dedicated team to keep
eye on them. The tools are Onvia, FindRFP, FedOpps.com
• RFP Database
▫ TCS also refers to standard third party databases which holds
information about recent RFPs released by various companies.

6. How company receives an RFP?
• RFP Postings on Professional Organization Sites
▫ TCS keeps track of various professional organisational sites to know
about the latest RFP postings.
▫ A team at TCS is monitoring this using few automated tools as well.
• Local or State Government Purchasing Sites
• Google alerts:
▫ TCS subscribes to a few Google alerts on standard feeds providing
various RFP and its updates. E.g. RBI feeds

7. How company responds to RFP?
• We have captured details on RFP response process on below points:
▫ Which are the teams involved?
▫ Formal process generally being followed for the response.
▫ How Go - No Go Decisions are taken?
▫ How estimations are prepared?

8. How company responds to RFP?
• The following different teams take part while responding to RFP.
▫ Sales Team
 Sales team may bring RFP through WIN BEFORE RFP way.
 RFP hunters team which keep track of RFPs through various channels
described earlier.
▫ Domain experts
 Domain experts or consultants who understand the client (RFP Initiator)
business and can better understand the clients business requirements.
▫ Technical/Middleware/Infra experts & BU/Delivery heads
 These experts and heads help understanding the requirements in terms of
complexity of implementation and efforts.

9. How company responds to RFP?
▫ Legal advisors to understand legal bindings and complexity.
 Legal advisors help in understanding the legal bindings and complexity of laws
applicable to client country.
▫ Proposal writers
 Experts in writing the proposal
▫ Market Experts
 Experts who can dig out the market and identify what exactly is the customers
business motive behind raising RFP? Why RFP was raised? Was the same
business solution being provided by other vendors ? Why the vendor is being
switched?

10. How company responds to RFP?
• Below are the steps in RFP Response process:
▫ Understanding the RFP and decomposing it in terms of Business
requirements/Technical requirements/Infra requirements and Legal
Bindings.
▫ Understanding the customers business or involving Domain experts who
had deep insight of customer’s business.
▫ Identifying whether the client and its business is permitted to deal with,
as per TCS values and policy.
▫ Identifying if this opportunity received through RFP is worth winning?
▫ Identifying if this opportunity received through RFP is already WON by
others before RFP Release.

11. How company responds to RFP?
▫ Understanding the legal complexity of RFP, checking if TCS can take
those legal buildings as per its policy
▫ Developing winning strategies
▫ Understanding the proposal process
▫ Making estimates with involvement of business, technical and infra
experts.
▫ Pricing the offerings
▫ Writing a proposal section

12. How company responds to RFP?
• Answers to the below Questions are sought and evaluated to take the
GO / NO-GO decision:
▫ What do you have to win in this contract? What is the benefit to business
in terms of Credibility improvement, Prestige improvement?
▫ Is it a new market area being explored? How about the Financial
benefits?
▫ Should you use specialists or consultants? How many of each? Do we
have that strength available? Can we make it available otherwise?
▫ Is the contract worth winning?
▫ Can this new contract spoil the relationship with another existing client?
▫ Can this new contract put a negative mark on your reputation in the
business world and society?

13. How company responds to RFP?
• Below are the steps while doing estimation as part of response to
RFP:
• Decide on estimation approach, identify which or which all would be
required.
• Analogy-based estimation
• WBS-based (bottom up) estimation
• Parametric models
• Size-based estimation models
• Group estimation
• Mechanical combination
• Judgmental combination

14. How company responds to RFP?
• As part of estimation, major chunk of work is on the blow lines.
• Identifying the items of work.
• Fixing a unit for each item of work.
• Calculating the quantity of work.
• Calculating the rate for each item of work.
 The rate is the cost of resources involved per unit of work. The resources are
usually:
 Man-hours.
 Overheads.
 Profit margin.
 The overheads involve:
▫ The establishment charges.
▫ Depreciation of systems and infrastructure.
▫ Licenses, permits, taxes.
• Fine tuning the final cost.

15. Percent of business through RFPs
• TCS has around 10% of business through RFPs.

16. Thank you