Process
A four-level model for European MICE hotel sourcing, with a 12-question scorecard and a 30/60/90-day plan to move up one level. Built for in-house planners, agencies, and procurement teams who want to stop running every cycle from scratch.
Reactive → Repeatable → Automated → Orchestrated
Process · Tooling · Data · Stakeholder Alignment
Yes (3) · Partially (1) · No (0)
Two planners running the same 50-room conference RFP can produce results that differ by 40% on price, two weeks on calendar time, and a category of contract risk that only shows up at signature. The variable is not talent — it is maturity. How much of the workflow is structured, captured, and connected.
This playbook gives you the diagnostic. Use it for your team, share it with a peer, or send it to procurement before the next renewal conversation.
Take the interactive quiz — no email, browser only.
easyhotelrfp.com/blog/rfp-automation-maturity-quizEach level is defined by what is and is not standardised, what gets captured, and how stakeholders plug in.
Brief lives in someone's head. Email and PDFs carry the cycle. Compare is a rebuilt spreadsheet. No carryover.
Reusable template. Canonical longlist by city. Comparison normalises breakfast and tax. No central system yet.
Briefs built from structured forms. Invites through a platform. BAFO and follow-ups scheduled. Multi-criteria scoring.
Outcomes feed forward. Reliability scores shape the shortlist. Clauses flagged against a library. Stakeholders plug in.
Time figures are illustrative ranges drawn from Easy RFP planner interviews and audit observations. Your mileage will vary by event size, room-night count, and team structure.
Question. Is the workflow repeatable without you in the room?
Good. A new joiner runs an end-to-end 50-room RFP using only documents and a checklist.
Question. What replaces email and spreadsheets?
Good. One system carries the cycle end-to-end, not five.
Question. What outcomes get captured across cycles?
Good. "How did this hotel perform across our last 4 RFPs?" gets answered in 30 seconds.
Question. Do finance, legal, and procurement plug into the same record?
Good. Approvals and sign-offs happen inside the same system the planner runs in.
Tick one box per question. Yes (fully) = 3 points · Partially = 1 point · No = 0 points. Sum each dimension's 3 questions (max 9), then scale to 0–100 by dividing by 9 and multiplying by 100. The overall score is the average of the four dimensions.
| Dim | Question | Yes (3) · Part (1) · No (0) |
|---|---|---|
| PROCESS | 1. We have a single reusable RFP brief template that gets used for every cycle, with last year's defaults carried forward. | |
| PROCESS | 2. We follow a documented step sequence (longlist → invite → respond → compare → BAFO → contract) that a new joiner could run with the docs alone. | |
| PROCESS | 3. We run a structured BAFO round on every RFP above a defined budget threshold — not just when the planner remembers. | |
| Process subtotal ______ / 9 × 100/9 = ______ /100 | ||
| TOOLING | 4. Hotel invitations, responses, and comparison happen inside one platform — not split across email, Excel, PDFs, and a shared drive. | |
| TOOLING | 5. Hotels respond through a structured form or supplier portal (not free-text email) so we get like-for-like answers. | |
| TOOLING | 6. Contracts are stored in a searchable repository with key clauses (attrition, cancellation, service charge, AV exclusivity) tagged. | |
| Tooling subtotal ______ / 9 × 100/9 = ______ /100 | ||
| DATA | 7. We capture response time per hotel per cycle and can rank hotels on reliability across the last 12 months. | |
| DATA | 8. After every cycle we record BAFO savings vs first-round price, so we can prove savings to finance with a number, not a vibe. | |
| DATA | 9. Comparison data (rate, F&B, AV, scope deltas) survives CSV export with custom columns intact, preserving an audit trail. | |
| Data subtotal ______ / 9 × 100/9 = ______ /100 | ||
| STAKEHOLDER | 10. Procurement and finance approvals happen inside the same system the planner uses — not on a separate email chain. | |
| STAKEHOLDER | 11. For client-facing work (agency, DMC), proposals export as white-label PDF with the client's brand, not the tool's. | |
| STAKEHOLDER | 12. GDPR, ESG, and compliance questionnaires are part of the structured hotel response — not an afterthought during contracting. | |
| Stakeholder subtotal ______ / 9 × 100/9 = ______ /100 | ||
Target your weakest dimension first. Most maturity gain comes from killing the rewrite tax in early levels and connecting outcomes in later ones.
Brief rewritten from scratch. Hotels Googled and emailed. Discovers at compare time that proposals are not in the same currency or include different scope.
Template and longlist exist. Nothing is captured across cycles. "Version 4 final final" template goes to half the longlist, version 3 to the other half.
Brief is structured, invites via platform, BAFO is one button. But outcomes don't feed forward — each cycle starts fresh on the data side.
Can't answer "savings versus what?" with a defensible number. Anchored to hotel "rack → real" cuts. Misses the benchmark conversation.
Send your next hotel brief through Easy RFP. Brief template, invitations, supplier responses, BAFO round, contract checklist — one system, free for your first event.
easyhotelrfp.com/briefs.new