Buy-side selection, run independently
RFP & RFI Consultancy On your side of the table.
Intology runs RFI, RFP and ITT processes for UK organisations buying technology and services. We are engaged by the buyer, we manage the process end to end, and we hand the board a recommendation it can audit. We do not write bids for suppliers.
Most competitive processes are lost before they start. The requirements arrive already shaped by the incumbent, the scoring model is written after the responses are read, and the decision is made in a demonstration that the supplier controlled. An independent process costs a fraction of the contract it governs and is usually the only part of the decision anyone can defend twelve months later.
Buy-side, not bid writing
The phrase "RFP services" covers two entirely different trades, and it is worth being clear which one this is.
Bid writers work for suppliers. They help a company respond to somebody else's tender and win the contract. That is a legitimate specialism and there are firms in the UK who do it well. It is not what Intology does.
Intology works for the organisation doing the buying. We write the requirements, design the evaluation, issue the documents, run the process, score the responses and recommend the award. If you are a supplier looking for help responding to a tender, we are not the right firm and we will say so in the first five minutes rather than the first invoice.
When an independent process earns its fee
Selections usually arrive attached to a trigger. The common ones:
- A contract is up for renewal and nobody has tested the market in years
- The incumbent supplier wrote the requirements, and the requirements look a lot like the incumbent
- A private equity sponsor wants evidence that a material spend was competitively tested
- An acquisition has left the group with two suppliers doing the same job at different prices
- An internal team has started a selection and it has stalled in vendor demonstrations
- The board will be asked to approve a decision it has no way of auditing
If you recognise two or more of those, the question is rarely whether to go to market. It is how to run the process so the answer holds up under scrutiny.
Our independence, stated plainly
Most advice available to a buyer comes from someone with a financial interest in the answer. Resellers earn on the licence. Implementation partners earn on the programme. Even a well-intentioned adviser who might bid for the delivery is not neutral about which supplier wins. Intology holds none of those positions:
No vendor commissions, ever.
Intology takes no commissions, kickbacks or referral fees from any supplier, and holds no reseller or partner agreements in the categories we evaluate. There is no answer to your selection that pays us more than another.
We do not bid for what we recommend.
Intology does not tender for the delivery that follows a selection we have run. Advisers who might win the implementation have a reason to prefer a particular answer. We remove that reason entirely.
The scoring is agreed before anyone sees it.
Weightings are signed off by your evaluation panel before a single supplier is contacted. Agreeing the model in advance is what stops a process being reverse-engineered towards a preferred outcome, and it is what makes the award defensible afterwards.
The evaluation pack belongs to you. Requirements, weightings, scores, rationale and correspondence are handed over in full at the end of the engagement, so the decision can be re-examined by a board, an investor or an auditor without us in the room.
How Intology runs an RFI or RFP
A typical process runs eight to fourteen weeks from mobilisation to award recommendation, depending on category complexity, the number of suppliers and whether a formal RFI stage is required.
Stage 1
Scope, requirements and evaluation model
We establish what is actually being bought and who has to live with it. Requirements are gathered from the people doing the work rather than lifted from a supplier's feature list, then weighted by materiality so the evaluation is not distorted by a long tail of functions nobody uses. The scoring model is agreed and signed off at this stage.
Stage 2
Market analysis and longlist
We assess the supply market against your requirements, sector, footprint and growth plans, and build a longlist on fit rather than familiarity. Where a supplier is a poor fit we record why. That reasoning goes into the pack, so the exclusions are as auditable as the inclusions.
Stage 3
RFI and qualification
An RFI qualifies the longlist on capability, financial standing, security posture, references and appetite for the work. It is a filter, not a formality. Running it properly is what stops three weeks of evaluation effort being spent on a supplier who was never going to be viable.
Stage 4
RFP or ITT and structured evaluation
We write the RFP or ITT, manage the clarification process, and score responses against the agreed matrix. Every scorer records a rationale, not just a number. Where panel scores diverge materially we moderate the difference rather than averaging it away, because the disagreement is usually where the real risk is.
Stage 5
Demonstrations, references and due diligence
Demonstrations run to your scripts using your scenarios, not the supplier's showcase data. We sit in, ask the awkward questions, and run reference calls with organisations of comparable size and complexity. Commercial, financial and security due diligence runs in parallel rather than after the decision.
Stage 6
Award, negotiation and handover
You receive a board-ready recommendation with full-term costs, a risk assessment and a clear statement of what we would do and why. We support the commercial negotiation from your side of the table and structure the contract so the assumptions behind the business case are protected in it.
RFI, RFP and ITT: what the difference actually is
The three terms are used interchangeably in practice, which causes real problems when a buyer asks for one and means another.
RFI - Request for Information
A qualification exercise. It asks the market who can credibly do this work, and gathers capability, financial standing, security posture and indicative pricing. An RFI narrows a longlist and shapes the requirement. It does not select a supplier, and it should not be scored as though it did.
RFP - Request for Proposal
A competitive evaluation. It sets out the requirement and asks shortlisted suppliers how they would meet it and at what cost. An RFP invites the supplier to propose an approach, which makes it the right instrument when the solution is not yet fixed and you want the market's thinking as well as its pricing.
ITT - Invitation to Tender
A formal, specification-led competition, common in UK public sector and regulated procurement. The requirement is already defined and suppliers price against it. An ITT gives the cleanest commercial comparison and the least room for a supplier to reshape the scope.
Choosing the wrong instrument is a common and expensive error. Issuing an ITT before the requirement is understood produces precise pricing for the wrong thing. Issuing an RFP for a commodity service invites six suppliers to write essays about a decision that should have turned on price and service levels. Part of our first conversation is establishing which one you actually need.
Categories we run selections in
The discipline is the same across categories. The market knowledge is not, so we are straight about where we bring it.
- Managed service and IT outsourcing contracts
- ERP, finance and business systems
- ITSM, service desk and end-user computing
- Cyber security services and managed detection
- Connectivity, telephony and unified communications
- Warehouse, logistics and manufacturing systems
- Data platforms, integration and analytics tooling
- Implementation and systems integration partners
Where the requirement is a full enterprise platform, the engagement is an independent ERP selection. Where it is confined to the general ledger, consolidation and reporting, it is a finance system selection. Both run to the same evaluation discipline described here, with category-specific market analysis on top.
What you receive
Every engagement produces a complete, transferable evaluation pack. Nothing stays with us.
- A weighted requirements set owned by your team, not by a supplier
- A documented evaluation model signed off before supplier contact
- A market analysis with recorded reasoning for every inclusion and exclusion
- Complete RFI, RFP or ITT documentation ready to issue
- A managed clarification log and a full audit trail of supplier correspondence
- Scored responses with written rationale from every panel member
- Scripted demonstration scenarios based on your processes
- Reference call findings from comparable organisations
- A full-term cost model covering licence, service, transition, integration and internal effort
- A board-ready award recommendation with risk assessment
- Negotiation support through to contract signature
Who we work with
Intology works with FTSE-listed companies, PE-backed businesses, mid-market organisations and UK public sector bodies, typically £25m to £2bn revenue or equivalent public sector budget. Over fifteen years we have delivered more than one hundred programmes for over fifty clients.
Engagements are staffed with senior practitioners only. There is no pyramid and no juniors learning on your time. The person who writes your evaluation model is the person who sits in the supplier demonstrations and presents the recommendation to your board.
A selection rarely travels alone. Processes frequently run alongside value creation work in PE-backed portfolios, M&A and post-merger integration where a group is consolidating duplicate suppliers after a deal, or programme assurance once the award is made and the implementation needs independent oversight.
Frequently asked questions
The questions UK boards and procurement leads most often ask before commissioning an independent RFP or RFI process.
Do you write bids for suppliers?+
What is the difference between an RFI, an RFP and an ITT?+
Do you take any payment from suppliers?+
How long does an RFP process take?+
Can you take over a selection we have already started?+
What if the right answer is to stay with our current supplier?+
Who owns the evaluation documentation afterwards?+
How is an independent RFP process priced?+
Do you support the implementation after the award?+
Going to market on something material?
Tell us what is being bought and what is driving the timing. We will tell you honestly whether you need a full competitive process, a shorter RFI, or simply a better negotiation with the supplier you already have. The initial conversation is free and carries no obligation.