Step 1: Define Your Project Scope and Objectives

The first step in the process is establishing a clear understanding of why a new HRIS is needed. This includes identifying current limitations within your existing system and articulating what success looks like post-implementation. To do this effectively, engage stakeholders across departments, particularly from HR, IT, finance, and operations—to collect inputs on pain points and expectations.

This section of the RFP should include a brief about your company’s size, structure, geographical footprint, and growth plans. The purpose of evaluation, the scope of departments affected, and high-level project goals should also be articulated clearly.

Step 2: Document and Prioritize Requirements

This phase involves listing every function the HRIS must fulfill, based on your business and technical needs. Requirements should be structured across several key domains, each of which was mapped out in detail in the Humaans scorecard:

• Employee Data & Profiles: Support for employment history, compensation data, probation triggers, and flexible fields.

• Organizational Chart & Access: Ability to visualize org structures and set up permission-based views.

• Time & Leave Management: Support for different leave types, absence visibility, flexible balances, and regional calendar customization.

• Self-Service & User Experience: Custom dashboards, edit access tracking, and single sign-on capabilities.

• Reporting & Analytics: Fully customizable reports, pre-built DEI dashboards, integration with CSV/API formats, and automated alerts.

• Performance Management: Goal setting, multi-source feedback, self-reviews, rating scales, and workflow automation.

• Employee Engagement: Pulse surveys, survey automation, custom question libraries, and engagement scoring.

• Integration & API Potential: Integration with ATS, Slack, SSO, DocuSign, and robust webhook/API functionality.

• Onboarding/Offboarding Automation: Customized workflows, digital signatures, pre-hire tasks, and internal checklist triggers.

• Compensation & Headcount Planning: Support for budgets, salary progression views, and historical cost tracking.

• Security & Compliance: GDPR compliance, ISO 27001 and SOC2 certification, deletion protocols, and audit logs.

Each requirement should be assigned a significance level (“Must Have,” “Important,” “Good to Have”) and vendors should indicate whether their product offers the functionality (“Yes,” “No,” or “In Roadmap”), along with space for contextual notes.

Step 3: Identify Current Pains

A thorough understanding of the problems with your current HRIS solution sets the context for change. In the Humaans scorecard, organizations are prompted to assess their pains by severity (inconvenience, minor issue, major issue).

Common issues might include: lack of self-service tools, inconsistent customer support, poor integration with other systems, limited analytics, manual processes for payroll and onboarding, poor UI, and difficulty locating key documentation. Each issue should be documented and mapped to stakeholders or teams affected. This not only strengthens your case for a new system but ensures that incoming proposals address the right areas.

Step 4: Create a Structured RFP Document

To ensure clarity and consistency across vendor responses, your RFP should include the following sections:

• Company Overview: Including employee headcount, locations, industry, and current tech stack.

• Project Goals & Scope: What you're looking to achieve and which teams or geographies are in scope.

• Pain Points: Detailed articulation of current challenges and system gaps.

• Functional & Technical Requirements: As detailed in Step 2.

• Implementation Process Expectations: Including training, onboarding support, timeline, and key deliverables.

• Evaluation Criteria: How the proposal will be judged.

• Vendor Details: Company profile, contact, relevant experience, differentiators.

• Budget Framework: Whether fixed, phased, or based on per-seat licensing.

• Legal & Compliance Requirements: Data handling, support SLAs, contract terms.

Step 5: Establish Evaluation Criteria

With a large number of functional and qualitative criteria, it's essential to apply a weighted scoring system. In the scorecard example, technical capability was weighted at 20%, UI/UX at 15%, and cost at 10%, with smaller weights distributed across support, scalability, integrations, and cultural fit.

For each factor, vendors receive a raw score (e.g., 8/10), and this is multiplied by its weight to yield a weighted score. Final vendor scores can then be tallied for objective comparison. This not only keeps the evaluation process fair but ensures alignment with your organization’s priorities.

Step 6: Build and Communicate a Realistic Timeline

Map out your evaluation timeline to keep all stakeholders aligned. Here is an example timeline, modeled from the Humaans project:

• RFP Sent: January 1, 2025

• Vendor Responses Due: January 9, 2025

• Discovery Rounds: January 17, 2025

• Product Trials & Deep Dives: January 24, 2025

• Commercials & Implementation Walkthrough: January 9, 2025

• Business Case Planning: January 17, 2025

• Wider Stakeholder Demo: January 24, 2025

• IT & Legal Review: January 24, 2025

• Target Launch: January 24, 2025

Each milestone should be assigned an owner and tracked for completion to ensure nothing slips.

Step 7: Ask Meaningful Vendor Questions

A good RFP doesn’t just ask for a yes/no checkbox. Instead, it encourages vendors to provide detailed explanations and examples. Instead of asking "Does your platform support onboarding automation?", ask:

"Can you describe how your onboarding workflows are triggered, customized, and tracked, and what reporting capabilities are available during this phase?"

Give vendors room to highlight unique features, innovations, or roadmap plans that may exceed your base requirements.

Step 8: Centralize and Manage the RFP Process

To maintain fairness and efficiency, all vendor questions should be collected and answered centrally. Distribute clarifications to all vendors at the same time. Send deadline reminders, confirm receipt of proposals, and ensure internal stakeholder alignment through weekly check-ins.

Step 9: Evaluate, Shortlist, and Select

Once proposals are received, use your scoring model to identify top contenders. Review each section carefully, paying close attention to areas marked as high priority. Bring shortlisted vendors in for live demos, ideally involving both HR users and technical stakeholders.

Demo sessions should follow a consistent script to make comparisons easier. Ask vendors to walk through the same scenarios, such as requesting time off, generating a headcount report, or onboarding a new hire.

Step 10: Final Decision and Contracting

The final decision should be based not only on demo performance and scores, but also on cultural fit, future roadmap alignment, and reference checks. Ensure that you fully understand each vendor’s implementation process, support resources, and SLAs before signing. Negotiate contract terms with clarity on renewal, exit terms, and pricing structures.