Request for Proposal
Also known as: RFP
A formal, structured solicitation in which a healthcare organization states requirements and invites vendors to respond on identical terms so responses can be scored comparably.
An RFP is issued when the organization has already decided it intends to buy something and now needs to choose among suppliers defensibly. It specifies requirements, asks for pricing on a defined basis, sets a response deadline, and usually describes how responses will be scored.
The scoring is the part that matters. A well-run RFP is evaluated against weighted criteria agreed before responses arrive, precisely so the decision can survive being questioned afterward. That makes an RFP much less persuadable than earlier-stage conversations: the criteria are already fixed.
The most useful thing to know about RFPs is that by the time one is published, the requirements in it were usually shaped by conversations with one or two vendors months earlier. Responding cold to an RFP you had no hand in shaping is a low-probability exercise, which is why discovery-stage visibility matters more than responsiveness.
An RFP is also not the only mechanism. Many software purchases never see one, moving instead through sole source justification or an existing master agreement.