What is RFP Answer?
Definition
Vendor's specific response to individual RFP questions addressing requirements, capabilities, and approach. RFP answers should be complete, specific, and verifiable rather than generic marketing statements. Evaluation teams use answer quality, completeness, and specificity to assess vendor understanding, product fit, and implementation approach. Well-structured RFPs facilitate answer comparison by using consistent question formats, response templates, and character limits across vendors.
Why This Matters
Answer quality reveals vendor maturity and product capabilities. Generic responses ('yes, we can do that') provide no verification. Specific answers with evidence (how it works, customer examples, screenshots) enable validation. Organizations should request response specificity in RFPs, set character minimums for key questions, and penalize vague responses during scoring. Answer quality predicts implementation reality.
Related Terms
Showing semantically related terms from our RFP knowledge graph. Priority connections are highlighted.
Essential Connections
RFP Response
RFP Fundamentals
Complete vendor submission addressing all RFP requirements, questions, and evaluation criteria.
RFP Questions
RFP Fundamentals
Specific inquiries in RFP templates designed to gather vendor information across categories including product functionality, security compliance, implementation support, company background, and pricing.
Proposal Response
RFP Fundamentals
Vendor's formal reply to an RFP with proposed solution, pricing, and capabilities.
Vendor Response
RFP Fundamentals
Formal submission from vendors answering all RFP questions with documentation, certifications, pricing, references, and supporting materials.
Request for Proposal
RFP Fundamentals
RFP stands for Request for Proposal—a formal business document used to solicit vendor proposals for products or services.
Evaluation Criteria
Vendor Management & Evaluation
Standardized requirements used to assess and compare software vendors including product capabilities, security certifications, implementation methodology, support SLAs, and pricing structure.
Scoring Rubric
Vendor Management & Evaluation
A weighted framework assigning numerical scores to vendor responses across evaluation criteria.
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Related RFP Templates
Explore our top RFP templates - all 75 templates include questions about rfp answer