Insert Company Logo

Date
Contact
Address
City, State Zip
Dear Contact,
Your company has agreed to participate in responding to a RFP for Company's ERP system
selection project. Vendor has been selected because the selection team believes your product has
a close fit to our business functional requirements.
Included, as part of the RFP is an overview of and questions that point to the decision drivers for
this project. Please review the questions and provide your electronic written responses via the
Word documents that have been attached to this letter. Your responses need to be received by the
end of the day on Date. Send them to E-mail Address. For VARS or affiliates, we ask for your
background information as well as that of the software vendor that you are representing.
Subsequent to the receipt of your answers, there may be additional efforts to contact you for
clarification. After reviewing the results of the responses, and pending any follow up, we will
schedule detailed vendor demonstrations with three finalists. These demos have been set to occur
starting Dates. Ultimately, Company hopes to make a purchase decision in Month.
If you do not intend on pursuing this opportunity, please inform me directly by Date with an e-mail
stating your reasons.
If you want to also produce a hard copy of the RFP with attachments or sales literature/CD, please
send to my attention: Address
Also, if you have any questions, please dont hesitate to contact me at: Phone or preferably E-mail.

Sincerely,
Name
Title
Company

Insert Company Logo

ERP Software RFP

Company Name

Date

Page 2 of 19

Table of Contents
Background Information................................................................................................................................2
A. History and Background........................................................................................................ 2
B. Market Segments and Product Groupings.............................................................................2
C. Organization.......................................................................................................................... 2
D. Mission and Guiding Principles..............................................................................................2
E. Current Business Systems and Hardware.............................................................................2
F. Why a New ERP System?.....................................................................................................2
G. ERP Modules To Be Evaluated..............................................................................................2
Decision Drivers..............................................................................................................................................2
A. Access to Information............................................................................................................ 2
B. Customer Facing................................................................................................................... 2
C. Order Processing................................................................................................................... 2
D. Project Management.............................................................................................................. 2
E. Configuration Management....................................................................................................2
F. Multi-Site................................................................................................................................ 2
G. Manufacturing........................................................................................................................ 2
Vendor Information.........................................................................................................................................2
A. Vendor Profile........................................................................................................................ 2
B. References............................................................................................................................ 2
C. Product Technology............................................................................................................... 2
D. Price Matrix............................................................................................................................ 2

Page 3 of 19

I.

Background Information
A. History and Background

B. Market Segments and Product Groupings

C. Organization

D. Mission and Guiding Principles

E. Current Business Systems and Hardware

1) Systems Hardware:

2) Application Software/Systems Being Used:

F. Why a New ERP System?

G. ERP Modules To Be Evaluated

Finance
o General Ledger
o Project Accounting
o Accounts Payable
o Accounts Receivable
o Cost Tracking
o Budgets and Forecast

Manufacturing
o Quality
o BOM
o Routings
o Purchasing
o Product Forecasting
o Materials Requirements Planning (MRP)
o Master Scheduling (MPS)
o Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS)/Finite Scheduling
o Inventory Management
o Maintenance/Asset Management
o Quality Management
o Shop Floor Control (SFC)
o Demand Planning
o Lean/Flow Manufacturing
Page 4 of 19

Customer Service/Customer Order Processing

o Customer Orders
o Warranty Tracking
o Product/Order Configurator
o Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
o Field Service (technical call tracking)
o CAD access / attach documents

Engineering
o Engineering Change Control (ECN/ECO)
o Product Configuration Management (PDM/PLM)
o CAD Integration / Interface

Business Intelligence (BI)

o Sales Analysis
o Report Writer

Bar Coding
o Inventory (receiving, movement, picking, shipping)
o Labor (attendance and jobs)
o Work/Shop Orders

Page 5 of 19

Decision Drivers
A Decision Driver is an idea, concept, functionality, or issue, which are critical to the business and
a differentiating feature of the software being selected. The Decision Drivers are not listed in any
specific order of importance.
Please address the questions listed and record your responses in the Response Excel template
that has been provided. When answering the questions, we are not looking for yes/no answers, but
for answers that describe how your system addresses the specific function. Your responses are
what the selection team will assess as to your software capability in satisfying their business
requirements.
A. Access to Information
Background:
1. Decision Driver Data Reporting
1. Explain the approach for accessing data via a report/writer

2. Is the report writer part of the standard product, or is it a 3rd party tool
(Cognos, Crystal, etc.).

3. Explain how the user can create a report or query with end user tools.

4. Are there user-friendly (intuitively obvious) canned reports?

5. Are canned reports modifiable by users?

6. Are financial reports able to be created with a financial report writer?

7. Describe how to create financial reports, i.e., month-to-date performance.

8. Explain how users are able to easily import and export data using MS Office
products (Excel, Access, etc.).

9. Explain the capability to access data via Web Portals/browser.

2. Decision Driver Data Reporting

1. Provide an overview of your systems workflow capabilities.

2. How are workflows customized or modified if the business process changes?

3. Explain if there are industry standard templates based on Best

Demonstrated Practices provided.

4. Can the workflow create user alerts for action, i.e., a customer makes a
change to an existing order, sales needs to inform customer service,
scheduling, and possibly purchasing and engineering or purchasing be
automatically notified of long lead-time item prior to the engineering being
completed.

Page 6 of 19

5. Explain how workflows can be used to route work or process through

alternative steps, depending on user-defined conditions or criteria.

6. Discuss the approval of and subsequent transmittal of documents, i.e.,

engineering, purchasing, proposal, quality to a customer or supplier for
review and approval.

7. Discuss the electronic signature approval process.

8. Explain how users are able to easily import and export data using MS Office
products (Excel, Access, etc.).

9. Explain if the Workflow tool is integrated throughout the application, or is it

an interface?

3. Decision Driver Business Intelligence (BI)

1. Provide an overview of the capability and application of the BI tools, i.e., how
is the data sliced and diced?

2. Briefly describe the approach and strategy to data warehousing used in the
software.

3. Are pre-defined cubes, metadata, business objects, or key performance

indicators (KPIs) provided?

4. Are there data warehouse tools (OLAP)?

4. Decision Driver Performance Metrics

1. Explain the systems capability in support of an executive/enterprise
information system (EIS) or executive metrics electronic dashboard.

2. Describe how the users can tailor these metrics, i.e., purchasing, sales,
manufacturing.

3. Does the software come with any industry Best Practices / Benchmark
metrics?

5. Decision Driver Consolidations

1. Describe how financial consolidations can be set up, i.e., multicompany,plants, business units, P&L centers, cost centers, and/or product
lines.

Page 7 of 19

B. Customer Facing
Background:
1. Decision Driver Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
1. Describe the major elements that are in the systems CRM module.

2. Is CRM integrated or a third party solution?

3. Can CRM be accessed via the web or portal?

4. Explain how a prospect can be entered into CRM and then converted into a
Customer when a sales order is received.

5. Explain how an estimate/proposal can be tracked and followed up within the

system automatically with a workflow or an alert. Include comments about
tracking if estimate/proposal becomes a lost sale.

2. Decision Driver Estimating and Proposals

1. Explain the components of an estimate.

2. Explain the components of a proposal, include how the overhead, burden,

and profit percentages or amounts are entered and applied.

3. How is the following information created as part of the estimating process:

labor estimates, material estimates, burden, outside processing, and
overhead applied to each estimate, special charges, and profit.

4. How can an estimate access actuals from history of the product being
quoted is similar to a previously configures and shopped product/item?

5. Explain how the user can do a same-as-except estimate?

6. How does your system capture and track documentation to be included in

the estimate/proposal including tracking open commitments and/or
comments?

7. Explain how an estimate/proposal can be converted to a customer order.

3. Decision Driver Sales Forecasting

1. Describe what tools are available to do product forecasting.

2. How can the input process be collaborative and allow input from various
sources?

3. Describe how the forecast input can be in dollars and units.

4. How is the summarization of the inputs done?

5. Describe how the forecast inputs can be amended.

Page 8 of 19

4. Decision Driver Field Service

1. Describe the activities that can track field service, i.e., labor, schedule,
material, and notes.

2. Can inventory be identified to field service personnel?

5. Decision Driver Warranty

1. Describe what information can be collected as part of warranty tracking.

2. Can information be collected by a serial number, including costs, material,

asbuilt and field configuration, etc.?

3. Describe how this information can be accessed.

C. Order Processing
Background:
1. Decision Driver Order/Product Configurator
1. Describe how the configurator can be used for pricing and taking an order for
configured products.

2. Describe how the configurator can have rules developed to define how
product is being ordered.

3. Does the system allow for multi-level rules based configuration with full
capability at lower levels?

4. Define how rules can be developed for multiple level configurations, i.e., a
rule with other rules defined within it. The current configuration rules
structure can go down about 1- levels. Some of these levels may be just the
defining of features & options within each level.

5. Does the configurator have multiple rule development techniques?

6. Describe the creation process and use of formulae for calculations.

7. Describe the feature and options capability of the software.

8. Can features-and-options be selected from on-line window of available

selections?

9. Describe if the system has the ability to add a feature of option at the initial
time of order entry but be able to add other F&Os at a later time.

10. Can the user define at least 30 features per product line or item numbers? A
feature is a group of options, e.g., car radios. Window grills, door lock
options, exterior finish? Is there a limit?

Page 9 of 19

11. Can user assign at least 100 options per feature? An option is a specific
type of selection, e.g., AM/FM radio, wood window grill, include deadbolt
prep, paint vs. light oak vs. no finish? Is there a limit?

12. Explain how configuration options could be multi-level and used for cross
validation.

13. Describe how the system can check selected features & options for crossinterdependencies and issue warnings.

14. Explain how the configuration tool can assist in the creation of a product
structure (BOM) and routing.

15. Describe the ability to change the configuration options and the testing
capabilities on the option (in setting up new configurations to be used later in
customer orders).

16. Is a part number generated for each configuration, or is a configuration ID

used?

17. Is there the capability to reuse configurations?

18. At order entry, can as-configured labor and material standards be

established? If so, how?

19. Explain the steps in the process for estimating a configured item, and later
awarding that item (i.e. converting an estimate to a firm order).

20. Explain how order changes are handles on configured items, including the
automatic and manual processes required for making the change.

21. What happens if a customer order change request is processed prior to shop
orders being released?

22. What happens if a customer order change request is processed after shop
order have all been released?

23. At order entry will configurator check time-phased available-to-promise

(ATP)?

24. At order entry will configurator check capable-to-promise (CTP)?

25. Explain how a change order to a configured product calculates the new ATP
or CTP?

26. Explain how the configuration tool can have effectivity dates, i.e., tie back to
an ECN effectivity date or a new product/item introduction.

27. Explain how the configuration process could be deployed via the web/portals
for use by reps.

Page 10 of 19

D. Project Management
Background:
1. Decision Driver Customer Initiated
1. How does your system capture and track proposal documentation to be
included in the proposal including tracking open commitments and/or
comments?

2. Describe how can RFI/RFP documentation be entered into the system?

3. What information is captured to describe a customer project?

4. What information is captured for the contract terms: billing terms, progress
payments?

5. Explain the components of the proposal, and explain how the overhead,
burden, and profit percentages or amounts are entered and applied.

6. Explain a development of a work breakdown structure top level only.

7. Provide a sample estimate that includes labor estimates for multiple

departments, material estimates for multiple departments, burden, and
overhead applied to each estimate, special charges, and profit.

8. How can actuals from history be accessed if the product being quoted is
similar to a previously shopped product/item?

9. How can the status of a quote be tracked and communicated to needed

personnel for action?

10. How can notes be managed in the estimate/proposal process and then
transferred to the order, customer master, or other documents used in
manufacturing?
11. Describe the process to convert a proposal into a received customer order.

12. Describe how a Customer project can be set up.

13. Describe how a Customer project can be scheduled.

14. Describe how the tracking of costs, engineering time, shop labor, expenses
can be collected and charged to the appropriate G/L accounts and Customer
order number.

15. Describe any reports that will assist in accessing project information.

Page 11 of 19

2. Decision Driver R&D

1. Describe how an R&D project can be set up.

2. Describe how an R&D project can be scheduled.

3. Describe how the tracking of costs, engineering time, shop labor, expenses
can be collected and charged to the appropriate G/L accounts.

4. Describe any reports that will assist in accessing project information

3. Decision Driver Investment

1. Describe how an investment project can be set up.

2. Describe how the tracking of costs, time, and expenses can be charged to
the appropriate expense and investment G/L accounts.

E. Configuration Management
Background:
1. Decision Driver Configuration Management
1. Demonstrate the ECN change process of the configuration tool.

2. What happens if an ECN is processed for shop orders that are not released?

3. What happens if an ECN is processed for shop orders that have been
released?

4. Review the Engineering Change Process of the ERP system. Describe the
workflow approval process and how different ECN approval processes can
be defined/set up.

5. Is the engineering change process used for BOMs and Routings? Discuss.

6. For a new customer order when engineering is required, demonstrate how

the engineer can look up all past ECNs (or currently TIs) relevant to the
configuration/item ordered by the customer.

7. Engineering vs. a manufacturing BOM. Can product be developed and

designated as an engineering item not to be released and then easily and
collaboratively released to manufacturing? This includes items for R&D
projects that may include items not to be sold.

8. How is revision control managed at the item level and other levels of the
BOM? Demonstrate the audit trail. Ability to manufacture multiple revision
levels of the same item at the same time.

9. Need to make sure that system acknowledges that the revision levels match
on documents, i.e. material requisitions, purchase orders.

Page 12 of 19

10. Can the system identify various options of a design change, i.e., pending, in
approval process, approved not implemented, and implemented?
11. Item number cross-reference. Can an item number be cross-referenced to a
customer or supplier number? How is this managed?

12. How can material/items be purchased without a completed BOM? All of the
item numbers have not been created.

13. Can the ERP system interface with the AUTOCAD system?

14. How is this interface or access done and what information is generally
transferred?

15. Are the above processed/managed within the systems PDM/PLM module?

16. If not, then define the functionality PDM/PLM that will assist our configuration
process.

17. How can the system support the product development process within
engineering and R&D?

F. Multi-Site
Background:
1. Decision Driver Multi-Site
1. Present the setup of site/plant/manufacturing facilities in your system.

2. What is the relationship to a site/plant and a business unit or profit center?

3. Discuss the chart of accounts structure that supports multiple sites.

4. Does this impact how the chart of account structure works in conjunction
with the setup of the business units and plants?

5. Demonstrate how the same finished goods or an item/sub-assembly would

be setup if it were to be made at two different plants, with different: routings,
costs, and BOMs.

6. What if the BOM is the same?

7. Which plant owns the data? How is this facilitated?

8. Are there multiple MRP runs for each plant or business unit (cascading), or
is there a single planning run?

9. How is the creation of transactions to move sub-assemblies/items between

plants?

Page 13 of 19

10. Discuss the transactions to move materials between plants.

11. Is there a transfer order or a sales order and purchase order? Is there
another option?

G. Manufacturing
Background:
Major Gaps:
1. Decision Driver Scheduling and Resource Planning
1. Provide an overview of the Planning and Scheduling tools available in your
system.

2. Define the systems advance planning and scheduling (APS) capability.

3. Explain how it can schedule shop orders based on given order prioritization
codes.

4. Explain how the order promise date will be established, i.e., ATP and CTP?

5. Are there Available to Promise (ATP) and Capable to Promise (CTP) queries
or reports? Does it look at either planned shop orders or released shop order
or both?

6. Explain how Outside Processing Steps are planned and schedule.

7. Discuss the Capacity Planning tools.

8. At what level is the capacity plan run (Work Center vs. Work Station)?

9. If at a Work Venter, how do you handle scheduling multiple Work Stations in

a given Work Center?

10. What tools are available to enable a given Work Center to see the total
workload maximize its runtime?

11. How the backlog is reported or viewed. Demonstrate the ability to change
the frequency and rules for production releases and sequencing of released
productions.

12. Discuss the ability to do constraint based scheduling where an operation in

the middle of the stream needs to drive the schedule of an earlier operation.

13. Provide an overview of your systems advanced scheduling capabilities.

14. Can the APS look at either planned shop orders or released shop orders or
both? For both capacity and materials?

Page 14 of 19

15. Discuss the ability to do parallel sets of operations and manufacturing

operations overlap for a batch.

16. How does the system support flow/demand scheduling?

17. What parts of Learn are supported?

2. Decision Driver Shop Floor Control (SFC)

1. Discuss how Work Centers, Operations, and Resources are set up.

2. Discuss how a Routing is created and review all major setup requirements.

3. How does the operator or material handler know what the next operation is
(or where the product needs to be moved to)?

4. What if there are multiple generic parts manufactured on the same shop
order but all are assembled at various operations on the shop order?

5. Review alternate, routings, work centers, operations, machines and

resources.

6. How are mass data updates processed for: routings, work centers, and
operations?

7. Discuss a dispatch list at a specific work center.

8. How are shop/work orders released?

9. Explain how shop/work orders can be split after the job has been released.

10. Explain how a shop order can be changed after the job has been released.
11. Is there a shop order scheduling via critical ration with shop order priority
codes, i.e., the system calculates a late or early indication ratio?

12. How can a batch/lot be processed throughout a number of different work

centers on a routing, i.e., manufacturing overlap at the same time?

13. Discuss the labor reporting options.

14. How can the system do labor and/or material backflishing at various points
within a manufacturing process?

15. What is the ability to link lower lever shop orders to their parent shop order
(e.g., final assembly shop order). The sub-assemblies would not exist as
stock item numbers in the item master, therefore, how is it put into inventory
prior to being consumed at final assembly?

16. Demonstrate how a serial number is assigned to a finished assembly. Can

quality information be collected at the same time?

Page 15 of 19

17. Demonstrate the ability to setup a routing that involves and outside service
(could be a blanket purchase order).

18. How would the shop order communicate with the purchase order need?

19. What would the material movement, shipping, and receipt transactions look
like?

20. Discuss the ability to group multiple operations together on a single order
and schedule them back-to-back across multiple machines.

21. Explain how the shop/work orders can be grouped and then sequenced by
material type or size.

22. Show how a specific replenishment location can be created. Show the
resulting automatic request to move materials from the replenishment
location to the assembly line.

23. Discuss how an electronic Kanban can create a request to purchase

materials from a supplier (e.g. create a release) to be consumed on the
assembly line.

24. Discuss how an electronic Kanban can automatically create a shop order for
stock manufactured parts required in sub-assembly or at final assembly.

25. Discuss the creation and control of the Kanban cards, Kanban sizes and the
Kanban loops.

Page 16 of 19

3. Decision Driver Quality Management

1. What processes or functionality within the software support ISO?

2. How can gauge and tool calibration tracking be accomplished within the
system?

3. Discuss the operations to establish and track lot numbers.

4. Discuss the options to establish and track lot numbers.

5. What features in the software allow for document control? These would
include ISO documents, process instructions. Tracking the revision level of
the documents?

6. Discuss how material non-conformance can be identified and how is the

corrective action noted, tracked, and managed.

7. Describe how material rejects are noted at receiving and in-process.

8. Describe the supplier return material process for rejected items.

9. How does the system allow the creation and management of nonconformance material or information?

10. Discuss how at time of shipping an inquiry can be made or the shipment
stopped if either are any open non-conformances, rev levels not current,
and/or validation if the required serial numbers are noted for the product.

11. Can the system track when an audit is required of a procedure or policy
based on a date, i.e., ISO?

4. Decision Driver Asset Management/Maintenance Management

1. Does the system have a module to manage the maintenance activity for
plant equipment and facilities?

2. Describe what elements of this activity are integrated within the system.

3. Can a PM schedule be set by equipment/work center?

4. Is the PM schedule tied into the production schedule?

5. Is there an asset master that defines the asset?

6. Is there a resource-scheduling tool?

7. Does the system integrate with purchasing, inventory management, and

account payables?

8. How is the management of inventory done for maintenance items?

Page 17 of 19

Vendor Information
A. Vendor Profile
Please provide company size and employee information for both the software vendor and
reseller (if applicable).
*Company Size in Millions (click to select): 1-5 Million

Annual Revenues two years prior

Annual Revenues previous year

Forecast for current year

Profit (Loss) two years prior

Profit (Loss) previous year

*Employees (click to select): 100-500

Number of Employees previous year

Number of dedicated employees in consulting and tech support

Number of dedicated employees in product development

B. References
Number of Customers that are running your ERP software core modules?

Number of Customers that are running your current release of ERP software?

Three references similar to Company's business model (Customer Name and

City).

Please provide the following information on 3 recent sales to companies similar

in size and business Company:
Number of users:

Applications/modules licensed:

Implementation proposal:
o Implementation partner

o Project scope

Page 18 of 19

o
o

Project duration

Project implementation costs

Consultant man days

Cost

C. Product Technology
Please provide a written response that describes the following languages and tools,
the names of the tools, ease of use, etc.
1. Programming Language

2. Internet Tools

3. Integration Tools

4. Database Tools

5. Application Development Tools

6. Compliant Databases

7. Compliant Operating Systems

8. Latest Software Release Number and Date of Release

9. Next Release Number and Planned Date

D. Price Matrix
Please provide a quotation for: <#> concurrent users or <#> named users.
Category
Application Software: (by Module)
Database Software
Hardware (best estimate) CPU, Disk,
and Operating System
Services - split cost for:
Education
Implementation Consulting
Data Migration Estimate
Totals

Component

Price

Page 19 of 19