You can never provide too much information or data for an RFP. The more information you provide, the less guess-work, the less surprises later on!  Very often the vendor or consultant will provide you a complete list of the data and information that they require for the RFP.  So don’t hold back unless you feel it’s absolutely necessary.

You’ll be signing an NDA (non-Disclosure Agreement) as well as a confidentiality agreement with the vendors so whatever data, information you do provide is fully protected.

But don’t provide salary data or your in house (labor) costs! Don’t make it easy on the vendors. They will be able to estimate your resource costs based on the headcount and positions/job descriptions they will be provided.

Ultimately, you want to avoid “baiting” the vendor into accepting RFP terms that they, unknowingly, accept, only to come back to you later with contract creep and increased costs, claiming they were misled about the contract scope. That happens when you don’t provide the full information they are seeking or “hold back” on something during the data gathering or services review phase of the RFP process.

Most vendors will insist on having analysts spend hours even days on your premises reviewing the current operations. This can be awkward on your incumbent vendor and worse, deflating to your in house staff if you’re considering outsourcing.

If you don’t want multiple vendors and their analysts on your premises, it may make better sense to hire a consultant to do the same. They will only have to be on site one or two times and are typically much more sensitive to in house or existing staff to make the process less invasive. They can put together the data and detail for the outsourcing vendors less pervasively.