When an RFP goes off the rails, most procurement teams blame evaluation.
They blame the scorecard. They blame the demo. They blame stakeholders who “cannot agree.” They blame suppliers for giving vague answers. They blame the sheer amount of effort it takes to compare proposals that feel like they are written in different languages.
In reality, evaluation is rarely the root cause. Evaluation is the moment where the weakness shows up. The weakness usually started much earlier, in the requirements.
If the requirements are unclear, incomplete, or internally inconsistent, the evaluation phase becomes a clean-up exercise. You are not comparing suppliers. You are trying to interpret what each supplier thought you meant. You are also trying to reconcile what each stakeholder now wishes you had asked for in the first place.
That is why so many RFP cycles drag. The evaluation did not create the mess. It revealed the mess.
Why requirements problems create rework
Requirements drive comparability. Comparability drives speed.
When requirements are strong, suppliers respond in a structured way. Their answers can be scored. Tradeoffs become visible. Stakeholders can disagree, but they disagree within a clear frame.
When requirements are weak, suppliers fill in the gaps with assumptions. And those assumptions vary.
One supplier assumes global coverage means follow the sun support. Another assumes it means 24x7 escalation only. One interprets “robust reporting” as a standard dashboard. Another interprets it as custom analytics. One reads “integrations” as basic ticket syncing. Another reads it as deep workflow automation. All of them may sound reasonable. None of them are directly comparable.
So evaluation turns into clarification.
Then clarification turns into rewritten requirements.
Then rewritten requirements turn into revised scoring.
And suddenly you are not running a competitive process anymore. You are running a slow, expensive discovery project in the middle of your RFP.
The most common requirements failure patterns
If you see any of these during evaluation, it is a strong signal that the requirements were not evaluation-ready.
First, scoring meetings become requirement debates. You are not discussing who is better. You are discussing what you actually meant.
Second, suppliers all “meet the requirement” on paper, and then demos reveal completely different realities. That happens when requirements are not testable.
Third, stakeholders introduce major needs late in the process. Legal or Security appears with a new constraint. IT adds an integration dependency. Finance changes the pricing assumptions. These are not bad stakeholders. These are gaps that should have been surfaced before the RFP went out.
Fourth, your Q and A log becomes larger than the RFP itself. That is the clearest sign that the original questions were not clear enough to produce consistent interpretation.
What to do instead: structure requirements for clean evaluation
You do not need a longer requirements document. You need a more disciplined one.
Start by anchoring the RFP in outcomes. Write three to five outcomes in plain language. Examples include reducing cycle time, improving auditability, improving service consistency, or reducing operational risk. Outcomes help you separate what is essential from what is simply desirable.
Next, define scope and non-scope. Put boundaries in writing. Make it explicit what is included, what is excluded, and what is assumed. This one step prevents a lot of late-stage scope creep that otherwise shows up as “new requirements” during evaluation.
Then, write requirements that can be verified. If a requirement cannot be tested in a demo, a report, a configuration screen, or a contract clause, it is not a requirement. It is a hope.
Instead of writing “easy to use,” define a workflow expectation. Instead of writing “robust reporting,” define what reports must exist and how often they must be produced. Instead of writing “seamless integrations,” define which systems must integrate, what data moves, and what the dependency assumptions are.
Finally, prioritize clearly. Use a simple structure like must-have, should-have, and nice-to-have. If everything is labeled critical, your scoring model will be meaningless and your evaluation will slow down because every disagreement will feel existential.
A practical way to keep demos honest
For workflow-heavy purchases, including IT services and sourcing platforms, checklists alone will not protect you. Everyone will say yes.
The better approach is scenario-based evaluation. Define three to six scenarios that represent your day-to-day reality. Ask suppliers to show exactly how their team and their tools handle those scenarios. Major incident response. A high-volume request. Multi-stakeholder approval. Controlled changes. Audit trail visibility. Supplier communications. Whatever is most relevant to your context.
Scenarios force proof. Proof makes evaluation faster.
The bottom line
Evaluation is not where RFPs fail. Evaluation is where failure becomes visible.
If you want faster, cleaner, more defensible RFP decisions, focus earlier. Align outcomes. Define scope. Write testable requirements. Prioritize ruthlessly. Use scenarios to validate reality.