One of the primary problems seen when buyers take an RFI, RFP or an RFQ to the marketplace is that they lack a fundamental understanding of the post-sale marketplace of infrastructure equipment. Third Party Maintenance is something that a buyer, even a very large one, can not simply declare requirements for purchase on to overcome deficits in the market. For example, a buyer can not state that they will only award business to a single entity company that can sell them Cisco SmartNet and also third party maintenance on the same order. The buyer will never find that company, namely because that company can not exist. Cisco does not permit its authorized SmartNet vendors to also sell non-authorized third party maintenance. You as buyer can not simply overcome that fact by putting it in as a requirement in your RFQ, so it is a waste of everyone's time if you do. You will dissuade honest sellers of third party maintenance from being interested in winning your business and you will incent dishonest sellers to tell you that they can do something which is not possible and puts you and them at risk.

Guidance for going to RFI:

In an RFI you should be concerned with items like financial viability, business model and capabilities of the providers. You should not be asking questions that expose your lack of knowledge on the third party maintenance marketplace.

Some ideas for questions to ask in an RFI for TPM are below:

(1) How long has your company been selling TPM?

(2) How many employees do you have selling TPM? How many employees do you have delivering TPM services?

(3) Does your company employ its own TPM Product or Offering Managers?

(4) Does you company employ technical backline support resources that support TPM service?

(5) Are you reselling another company's TPM services?

(6) When I need to open a service incident with you, what is the process? Specifically, who takes the first call and what do they do? 

(7) Can your company evaluate a list of infrastructure hardware and give me clear recommendations on what devices I can expect low risk in putting them on TPM contracts?

(8) What service level agreements do you offer in relation to TPM services?

(9) Does your company own the replacements parts used in remediation of TPM service incidents? If not who does?

(10) Does your company employ field engineers used in TPM service incidents?

Guidance for going to RFQ:

In an RFQ you should be publishing a list of infrastructure that you the buyer have determined to be devices fit for TPM.  You should not be publishing a list of everything you have and asking for a price for a given SLA. Publishing a list of everything creates a situation where a seller may be giving you a price on a device that is not a good fit for TPM and you assuming that said price represents a full assumption of risk on the part of the seller. This is a buyer beware situation. A priced line item does not mean you are risk free on that item. Do not assume that because Vendor A prices an SLA for you that Vendors B and C will also price that item. Vendor A may not be doing their due diligence on the item.

You should rely on #7 above or a knowledgeable TPM consultant to refine and reduce your infrastructure list to what items can be safely covered by TPM with minimal risk.

You should also avoid going to RFQ with multiple (more than two) columns of SLAs. This has the appearance of a pricing exercise and will dissuade more capable TPMs of pursuing your business aggressively. Lesser capable TPMs will price anything you put in front of them as a means to acquire business. You should not be determining your budgetary spend by using multiple SLAs to get the most for the least spend. Determine your SLA requirements first and request quotes on one or two of them at most. As noted elsewhere, it will be difficult to get same day parts SLAs from most providers, so pursuing pricing on them may be of very limited value to you.

Guidance for going to RFP:

In a TPM RFP you should not be pursuing very many customized requirements. The market will not support that type of an approach. If you need a highly customized TPM solution, it would be best to select two or three vendors via the RFI process and then negotiate with each to develop a custom solution. Because the barrier to entry to selling TPM is low, setting specific customized requirements in a market filled with smaller less capable sellers only invites them to exaggerate their capabilities and say yes to every one of your requirements, just to win your business. Service delivery around TPM is not rocket science but it does require a level of execution expertise that can not simply be willed in to existence by a purchase order. A "custom solution" enacted by a small seller or provider will typically miss the mark on execution, and a "custom solution" enacted by a more capable provider will typically revert to the delivery standards that the capable provider already has in place. 

In an RFP you should be using the questions above from the RFI section and you should be following the guidance in the RFQ section, specifically in going to market with a known list that you have vetted to insure that it aligns to your risk outlook. Do not expect to fully offload all risk because you have a well structured RFP as, again, the market of providers does not support this expectation. Your approach should be to understand the TPM delivery market and align your business expectations to what it can provide you at the best price.