The umbrella term for structured sourcing requests: RFI for information, RFP for proposals, RFQ for quotations. Choosing which instrument to issue is itself a decision about what kind of answer you will get.
Teams debate vendors for months and pick the sourcing instrument in a sentence. Yet the instrument sets the terms of the whole exercise: what vendors can say, what gets compared, and what the process is able to discover.
Last reviewed 3 July 2026 · Free and ungated
Challenge the sourcing approach before it goes to market: selected senior operators have run, and responded to, every instrument in the family.
Pressure-test your shortlistRFx is shorthand for the request documents used in structured sourcing. An RFI gathers information about vendors and approaches while the buyer is still learning. An RFP invites proposals, asking vendors how they would solve a defined problem and at what price. An RFQ requests quotations against a precise specification, where the main open variable is price. The x stands in for the variable; the differences between the instruments carry the consequences.
Each instrument assumes a state of knowledge. An RFQ assumes the specification is right and complete, so it should follow requirements work rather than replace it: issue one for a complex service and you force vendors to price your misunderstanding, then live with the winner. An RFP assumes the problem is defined but the solution is open. An RFI assumes neither. Skipping a stage does not save time; it moves the unresolved questions into the contract, where they are settled by change order at the vendor's rates.
The commonest abuse is the pre-decided outcome: a full RFx run to document a choice already made, which wastes serious bidders and teaches the market that your processes are not real, so the strongest firms decline the next one. Close behind are specifications written around one vendor's product, timescales only the incumbent can meet, and question sets so long that responding is uneconomic for everyone except the largest players, which filters the field by size rather than fit.