I got a request to submit an RFP. Nothing unusual in that, these things show up all the time.
When the business was new, I used to jump up and down and squeal with delight before throwing myself into a proposal writing frenzy. Now I know better. Still, it's always interesting to see what's coming over the transom.
This one required you to participate in a reverse auction scenario, where you always know if you are the lowest bidder, and you can keep going down until you go broke.
You have been invited to submit quotes to xxx Corporation for Market Research Services. You need to submit your best price in the SafeSourceIt™ eNegotiation tool to xxx prior to the event conclusion. Pricing must be submitted by 9/20/2012 at 12:00 PM EDT. The auction is scheduled for 15 minutes plus any event extensions. The view you will have during the quoting process is called “Low Quote Indicator” This means that during the process you will know if you are the low quote by a yellow indicator over your quote. You will not have access to any other quotes being offered Parkland.
The reverse auction idea sounds really interesting when you hear about it as something happening in another industry. But all I could think of here is that this is an invitation to have quality go right out the window. It does satisfy the desire to know how close you are to the pricing of your competitors. And may well be fairer than other methods for this kind of project.
Fortunately, over here in the insight corner, we don't have to bid on this kind of project, which was all about collecting thousands of interviews over the course of a year.
My favorite part is the name of the tool... "eNegotiation."Or is that just my quirky sense of humor?
