Free Software RFP Template to Download [+5 Tips]

If you are looking to develop a software solution on Upwork or Freelancer, you might be looking to choose the best custom software solutions provider. To rectify the best software development partners, you need to create a proposal. As a software development company, we know how hard and tiring it is to create a proper and detailed software proposal. That’s why we have created a software RFP template for you. And, it’s free to download and use.

However, if you are looking to create an effective RFP template, you must go through the following tips.

5 Tips to Write an Effective Software RFP

Here are the most useful tips that help to write an effective software RFP for software projects.

1. Create a Spreadsheet for Your Requirements

   A list of requirements could be long and including all your requirements is not possible. That’s where you should create a spreadsheet including all the features and functionalities you want in your software. This way, you are able to send your requirements to vendors and let them get to know your exact requirements. And, there is no possibility of miscommunication and misconception.

2. Provide Only Essential Information Initially to the Vendor

   While creating a proposal for your software development, you must only provide the essential stage. At the initial stage, you should not overload all the information in your proposal. Your proposal should only have information that is necessary like the outline of requirements, deadlines, and contact information.

3. Provide Transparency at Important Steps in RFP

   Transparency makes a big difference as it clears your requirements to another person. Similarly in an RFP proposal, there are three parts in which having transparency is extremely important.

   Those three parts are as follows.

   • Background and content – This includes information about your business and the solution you want.
   • Expected outcome and goals – This includes information about how creative or unique a solution you want and what are your timelines and deliverables.
   • Evaluation and scoring – This includes information about who will evaluate the proposal and how. So software development vendor can spend their time accordingly on each depending on its priority.

4. Include Questions, Sections, and Templates as Required

   Creating an RFP is a long and tiring process as you need to do details in multiple sections. Every RFP is quite different as per the industry and requirements. Although, most sections would be the same.

   So, creating a standard library for questions and sections helps to quick the process. Having a standard library containing questions and sections helps structure your process proposal and speeds up the overall process. To help with questions, here is the list of 101 questions to ask in a proposal.

5. Make Your RFP Proposal Easy to Read

   While writing your RFP proposal, you must make it easy to scannable and readable. Instead of creating large text content boxes, adding subheadings and bullet points helps you to describe the requirement properly in your RFP proposal. This way, you are able to make your RFP more visually appealing and easy to understand to vendors.

   Using software RFP templates helps to create your proposal effortlessly. Because of readily available templates, you don’t need to start from scratch. As the sections are defined in an RFP template, you don’t need to waste your time creating them. This way, you save your time and effort while creating an RFP template for your software. If you are looking for more software templates or any particular template, connect with us.