thought leadership · · 7 min read
RFP readiness — five things every government IT vendor gets wrong
We've responded to enough sovereign IT RFPs to know which vendors win. Hint: it's almost never the lowest bid or the flashiest demo.
Government RFPs reward different things from enterprise procurement. Vendors built for one routinely lose at the other.
Five mistakes we see again and again:
- Bidding on capability rather than operating posture
- Talking architecture when the regulator wants audit
- Pricing the build but not the run
- Demoing the consumer surface, not the operator console
- Skipping the hand-off plan because no one asked for it explicitly
The consistent winner is the vendor who treats the RFP not as a sales document but as the first chapter of a multi-year operating relationship.
Authors
Sara Al-MahriChief Operating Officer