789: How to Navigate the Complex World of RFPs - Dr. Amanda Opperman, Co-Founder, Helios Education Lab

[Elvin Freytes]
Welcome back everybody. It's your time to EdUp on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is Elvin Freitas, co-founder of the EdUp Experience. And before I get into it with my guest, let me just say thank you to all of you who have signed up for our email list. Go to our website, edupexperience.com to learn more about all of the nearly 800 episodes and all the different guests we've had on.

Our commencement, the book, "The Beginning of a New Era in Higher Education" that was written with Kate Colbert, Dr. Joseph Sallustio and contributions by Owen Freitas. And get on our email list, please get on the email list and we'll let you know where we're going to podcast live because we're going, as hopefully you know, different places to podcast live, which is a lot of fun. EdupExperience.com. Okay, great. Now let's get to it. My guest today is Dr. Amanda Opperman and she is the co-founder of Helios Education Lab. Amanda, how you doing?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Hey, I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

[Elvin Freytes]
Yeah. And it's super cool just for context so the audience knows we have been connected via LinkedIn for a long time. I can't remember. It's been a while. And yeah, it's good to have you on the podcast and nice to meet you, right? Not in person, but virtually. And to learn more about Helios Education Lab. So please, Amanda, what is Helios Education Lab?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
So this is a fairly new venture on my part, because as you know, since we've been connected for a few years now, most recently I was in higher ed as an administrator. I was a vice president of marketing and admissions, and I was really leading departments, working deep inside universities. And I had a very straightforward administrative role, but through COVID actually, and even through some of the people that you and I connected with over LinkedIn in our LinkedIn groups, I started picking up consulting work and it was just happening organically and I loved it and it was really going well. So I leaned into it really hard and I made a big decision to actually pivot away from being an administrator and start this venture and have my own consulting firm. And it's been amazing. We do marketing and enrollment consulting for colleges and universities because that's my background and my partner's background. And then more recently, we're really leaning in hard to providing IT consulting to organizations including educational entities and even government entities because their structures are very different and how they do procurement and things like that. But what we're doing is providing IT consulting for those types of organizations that need digital transformation. Yeah, so that's Helios and that's me.

[Elvin Freytes]
Okay, awesome. I appreciate the context. So the reason why we're on the call today is because I put out a post and I wanted to talk to someone who had experience working with RFPs, otherwise known as request for proposal. Obviously, I just started working with this. And I'm sure that there's tons of people who are listening who want to learn more. Request for proposals. First of all, tell us about how you got into that world. Maybe, I mean, I got tons of questions, so I'm going to try to go one by one. I mean, what is an RFP? What is it all about? How did you get into that world? Let's start there.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Yeah, absolutely. So I've been a part of the RFP process from both sides. I've been the vendor or the partner who's trying to put out a bid and win the RFP. And then during my years as an administrator at colleges and universities out in California, I was the one who was putting out the RFP and then looking at the bids that came in. So I've been on both sides of it.

The RFP process, like if we just look at it at its core, what it's intended to do, it was designed for any publicly funded entity, whether that's an educational institution or a government institution, sometimes even a nonprofit. But any publicly funded entity needs to go through this process because it provides transparency, fair competition, accountability in their procurement activities because being publicly funded means they're spending taxpayers' dollars. And the RFP process is designed to protect and make sure that the taxpayers' dollars are being spent responsibly. And I know so many colleges and universities these days, we are choosing to operate like businesses from like an operational standpoint or an efficiency standpoint, but for any school that is taking Title IV funds or other public funds, behind the scenes, they are still a publicly funded entity, even though they might be operating like a business in some areas. So that's why the vast majority of schools that you work with or that you work for, they're going to require an RFP process.

[Elvin Freytes]
Gotcha. By the way, you're so eloquent. I love the way you talk. I mean, that's great. It just helps me. I really appreciate that. So I want to know, let's start on when you are preparing an RFP to ask for bidders, I guess, right? When you're working at a university college or a public funded institution. How does that process work? I mean, is it something that a supervisor says, OK, we need this service. We need a problem, we have a challenge, right? And we need a solution. So let's put together an RFP so that way we can get bidders and figure out who's going to be the best vendor that's going to provide the best solution for our challenge. How does it all work?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Yeah, yeah. There's kind of like the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. And then the way it happens is kind of in between. I'll share it all. In the most perfect ideal world, the letter of the law, somebody inside the university is supposed to say, we need X, Y, Z to get our job done, or we need such and such resource to get our job done. We don't have it in house. It's not cost effective to do it in house. So we're gonna have to procure this from some external partner.

In theory, they would sit down like in a vacuum almost and write down, here's exactly what we need, here's exactly what we're looking for. Then they would post it and anybody and everybody who thinks they can meet that need, they have their chance to submit their proposal and compete for that business. So that's how it would be supposed to work in the most, I don't know, pure world. But what's happened over the years, some people don't really like how long it can take to go through the whole RFP process. And even though it was designed with this really pure intention of protecting public funds, sometimes the people inside the university, they're like, hey, this is making it hard for me to get my job done because I actually already know a partner who can do this for me. And I'm going to now sit down and go through the motions or go through these steps and make all of these other people compete for this business when I actually already know this company is gonna provide me with the best solution, they're gonna give me the best cost, and I'm gonna feel really confident about the outcomes that it's gonna get me. I feel very confident and comfortable that I'm spending public money on this. So what has happened in a lot of places is people kind of find loopholes, so to speak. They'll start to design an RFP with a specific vendor in mind.

[Elvin Freytes]
Okay. Got it.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
That's not how it's really supposed to go, but you know, I have seen it happen that way before. So you'll have companies who will bid on it and they might not even have a fighting chance at all because while the RFP was being written, it was actually being written with a very specific vendor in mind.

So there's ways that you can look through an RFP to try and detect if that's what's happening. This is where, so like my experience competing for business, I learned some of this the hard way. If you see something like, the partner's office needs to be such and such miles away from the school. Or if you see just an incredibly detailed specification. It's a little bit of like ding, ding. This may have already been written for someone else. And if you have your team spend time and resources putting together a proposal, it's almost, this is so sad to say, it would almost be like a waste of time because there's already a top choice in mind.

[Elvin Freytes]
Yes, yes. So this is good stuff. I love this. Okay, here's the question though. Let's say the team gets together at an institution and they're putting this bid together. Maybe they do have someone in mind, maybe they don't. How long is that process? And then what are they thinking that they want to get? When people are responding to them, do they want, because I've heard different things, I've heard, do they want a story? You know, you got to write a story. You know, is that what they want? Because when you're reading these bids, cause it's a lot. It's a lot of information. It's very dense. And so do they want, do you want, when you're sitting there and you're reading these bids, right? Do you want to read a story or do you just want the answer is yes, no, yes, no. The link here, you know, tell us about that.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Yeah. Yeah. So when I was the person writing the RFP with my team, there's definitely like an art to it. And some people have got it down because they've been doing it for years. If you've got someone who's really good at writing the RFP, they're going to give really specific questions, really specific kind of like specifications. So then the company who wants to bid on it, they could read that checklist and say, here's exactly what they want to know from me. I don't got to waste my time with anything else. I'm just going to tell them exactly what they want to hear.

It's almost like when you're applying to school or something and you have to fill out the application. So if they have a question like the background of the company, is the mission of the company aligned with the mission of the school or what are the values and do the values match with the values of the school? That's a place where it can give you room to tell some story. But the other questions, if they're written effectively what they're really gonna wanna know is how can you help me achieve X, Y, Z? And how can you achieve it for me better than if I had done it in house? Because again, the reason they're doing the RFP is because they're choosing to not do something in house. So there can be some room to tell, do some storytelling, but if a team is reading through tons of RFPs, they're not gonna wanna spend a whole lot of time with really flowery stuff. They're gonna care about the parts of the story that really match with their needs. Cause at the end of the day, it's all about getting their needs met.

[Elvin Freytes]
Now, how long does this process take for them to create an RFP to put it out there in the world? I mean, are we talking weeks, months? What are we talking?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
It really depends on the organization. So in an ideal world, you can get, you know, you can request from your procurement office that you need to put something out to bid, you can write your RFP, and then they can post it for you in a few weeks. But very like, you know, specific to each organization, some places just have more red tape, some places just have more, you know, internal channels of things to navigate, like 400 forms for something that's a part of university world and government world sometimes. So it can take a pretty long time if you've got an organization with a lot of red tape. And that goes back to why some people will start to resort to finding the loopholes in the system. Because they're trying to speed things up. They want to get a solution really fast. They've got some boss or some team who's like, hey, we need this from you. And the RFP can actually be seen as slowing it down. 

So it can take weeks or months if you've got a university, for example, where there's lots of layers of approval, where maybe your school is part of a graduate school and there's a lot of different graduate programs in the graduate school, and all of those graduate programs all have RFPs and they have to go up to the grad school level, then the grad school is part of a larger campus that has tons of different schools. And if there's lots of layers of approval, it can take a long time. But again, this is just super unique to each place. Maybe you know someone who's worked there for a really long time and you work internally to kind of get yours through faster. There's definitely people who have been inside the system a long time and they've figured out the way to navigate things through it a little faster.

[Elvin Freytes]
Are you kidding me? No, I'm not. 

[Commercial Break]

[Elvin Freytes]
Okay. That makes that, that helps. And so when this group, cause I'm assuming it's always a group, I'm assuming it's always a group of people. I'm assuming it's like admissions, you know how they have like that first reader and then they kind of have a little group and admissions group. And then the first reader may say there's a second reader and then there's someone who presents to the group and on the applicant. So is it similar in terms of the bidding process when they get all the bids and sourcing through and then what's that process like right once they come in? And you know what? Also I noticed too, I noticed that when you say they posted out in the world, they posted out to a lot of websites where you have to either pay to be able to see the bid, right? You have to pay like a membership to see the, it's not like it's out there for free. I mean, unless I'm seeing things wrong, but sorry, man. There's just so much there. It's just like, many questions. But let's go back to, okay, once the bid comes in, what does that process look like? You know, and the group is the committee or whatever has it, which I don't believe in committees, but the group has it and they figure out how do we get all through all of these bids? Are there any like red flags like, this one's not gonna make it to the next pile. Tell us about your experience.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Yeah, yeah. And I think I can even weave it in with the other part of your question about those paid platforms. So there's lots of places where schools can post their RFPs. They can post it straight on their website. They don't have to use one of those platforms. So if you do see an RFP on a platform where you have to pay, that can already be a little bit of a signal where it's like, they're not trying to get this out there. They're not trying to have everybody in the world see it or else they would have put it in a more free public forum. So maybe there's some other preferred vendor they already have in mind.

[Elvin Freytes]
I love that insight. Thank you.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Okay. Yeah. And then another thing is if you see in the RFP, if it says something like you've got 10 days to respond or you've got five days to respond. That can also be another hint. It's like, okay. There might be some preferred vendor out there who maybe even helped them write the RFP a little bit, which again, it's not supposed to happen that way, but sometimes I've seen it out there in the world that it does happen that way. So you'd be like, it feels impossible to get an RFP done in that amount of time. And it's like, yeah, they wanted it to feel impossible because there's someone else waiting in the wings who already has it pre-written.

[Elvin Freytes]
Yep, got it. Yep, that's great. Keep going.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Yeah. But then the way it goes when they're actually getting submitted, again, this is so unique to each school. At the end of the day, it might be one person. It could be a director. It could be a vice chancellor. It could be one person who sits down and just reads through them all. And then depending on what kind of structure they have above them. Maybe they just tell their manager, here's the one I chose and here's why. And the manager said, great, go for it. Or it might be something a little more formal where they sit down and make a presentation to a group of people and say, here's the top three. It's very unique to each institution. 

So for me, the way that I saw it happen when I was working at universities, I had trust with the person that I was reporting to. And they would say, hey, the next time we do our weekly one-on-one, you know, tell me your top couple of choices and tell me which one you recommend. And just verbally in our next one-on-one, I would share it with them and they'd say, great, go for it, put it into your budget. And that was it. And then I would choose on my team, you know, my couple three most core people that I would go to, because I really trusted their opinions or I relied on them, I would maybe share it with them and get their feedback as well. So it was just a pretty small group internally. And then the rest of the paperwork, it would navigate its way through different channels, but the channels were a little bit of a formality, really.
So there's not as much like a pomp and circumstance that you might imagine where it's like, hey, let's all sit down together as a group. Let's all read these proposals together. Let's pick the top ones. And now we're going to make a presentation for the group above us in the majority of environments that I've worked in. It's never that involved because these people are trying to get so much done and they're already feeling slightly burdened by the RFP process that they're trying to make it go as fast as possible. And again, I know that's probably a little bit of bad news because that's not the exact way that it was designed to be, but just reality comes into play and that's kind of what it has become.

[Elvin Freytes]
Yeah. Wow. This is fascinating. So are there any red flags that bidders should be aware of when they're putting their RFPs together saying, don't do this? Nobody, when you're receiving these, all right, I'm reading these, we don't want this on the RFP. Please don't do that. Yeah. Anything that is not directly tied to a question or a bullet point in the RFP itself, if you can't make a direct line to it, leave it out. Because it's going to be seen as extra fluff. Really, yeah.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
When they write the RFP, they're basically saying, here's my needs, here's what I wanna see from you, just show me what I wanna see only. If they want quote unquote extra fluff, maybe they'll put a question at the bottom that says, please include anything else that you would be relevant. And maybe they'll glance at it, but really use their RFP to a T.

If they say we're looking for X, Y, Z, every single thing in your proposal should directly tie to X, Y, Z. And I mean, even make that like the headings, you know, the headings in your RFP say in this RFP, we're going to touch on X, Y, Z, chunk number one, chunk number two, Y, and just make it super tight right to what the RFP asks for.

[Elvin Freytes]
Okay, got it. And so one thing that I've noticed is that sometimes they have a lot of yes, no questions. So is the best practice to say yes and then provide a description or is it just to say yes or provide a link if they want to learn more and what you know, when you provide links because obviously there's so much that is on the website of a company that's a bidder right? It's easy for the bidder to say look dude, we got everything on our website. Just here's the link to that. Here's like you want XYZ. Here's a link to X. Here's a link to Y. Here's a link to Z. It's like the easiest thing to do. But I'm just curious reading that is that something you think that is a good practice? Saying, so yes, no question, yes. And then if you want more information, here's the link or just yes and moving on.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
I would do yes, followed by maybe like a one sentence, super, super brief backup as to why the answer is yes. And then you can also add a link, but like you had said, it's so easy to just put in a link. It's easy for the vendor. But then what it does is it puts a burden on the person reading the proposal. It puts the burden on them to go click a link to a website and that website was not designed for them to read, right? The website was designed for anyone in the world who goes to that website to read it. So what that does is it kind of makes it seem like the vendor is more in it for what's easy for them and just says, hey, look at our website, you could figure it out.

From the point of view of the person who made the RFP, they're like, hey, if I wanted to just choose something by reading a website, I wouldn't have gone through the process of making this RFP. You know what I mean? Like the RFP is the chance for you to show me what you can do and show me how you're catered to my needs and show me how you'll meet the outcomes that I'm trying to seek. Don't give me just one generic website link that's meant for anyone in the world. I need something very specified to my needs.

[Elvin Freytes]
Interesting. That's really good insight. So are there any other things during your experience that you can think of that people need to know about this whole RFP process that we haven't covered yet? I feel like we covered a lot, which is great. A lot of good insights. So is there anything else that you can think of?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Yeah, something that can be really helpful to the universities. It's a huge time saver. They can see if the state that they operate in, if their state has any kind of cooperative procurement contracts.

[Elvin Freytes]
Ooh, what's that?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
And so, yeah, these are so helpful. So there are groups or entities out there, cooperative purchasing organizations. What they do is they actually facilitate government procurement for public agencies, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations. Some examples are Omnia Partners or SourceWell. So these cooperative purchasing organizations, they will actually put together massive lists of pre-approved vendors and pricing that any publicly funded institution can go and pick off of that list. And the way they do it, the purchasing organizations, what they do is they leverage the collective buying power of all of the groups that are in their membership. So if you're a school, if you're a government entity, you can pay like a small membership fee to be part of these cooperatives.

And what it does is it gives you access to these cooperative contracts and it helps you avoid the RFP process entirely because yeah, what these cooperative contracts have already done is they've already negotiated with the different member groups and gotten down to the lowest price that they can, that would be approved by the state. And it does the same thing as the RFP at the end of the day. It protects the taxpayer's dollars and they can feel good about, right, these taxpayer's dollars are being spent in a responsible way. They're being, you know, we're only gonna pay X, Y, Z price for such and such thing because it was already pre-negotiated by this purchasing organization on behalf of the collective membership. And in that membership would be the colleges, the universities, the government entities, et cetera. 

And there's a group called NASPO, the National Association of State Procurement Officials. They've actually put together some pricing lists, some pre-approved pricing lists. And what some of these cooperative purchasing organizations do is they'll just negotiate directly and say, you have to meet the NASPO price. If you meet the NASPO price, you can be part of this cooperative contract and these government institutions or these educations, they'll be able to buy directly from you with less red tape, so long as you always meet these NASPO prices. That's very helpful to the school because they could say, hey, let's leverage this cooperative contract. Let's, you know, become an Omnia member or let's become a Sourcewell member. And now we're going to be able to go straight to this contract list and see anybody who's on it know they're pre-approved and it's going to save them the time of having to go through the RFP. Then for the vendor as well, you can go through the process of getting on that list and what it changes the conversation. So now if you're a vendor, instead of going around and trying to bid on all these RFPs, what you do is you get yourself onto the cooperative contract because you guarantee that you'll always meet the NASPO prices, for example, or whatever prices they have pre-approved. You say that you will always offer your services at those prices. And then you just reach out to anybody that you want to do business with and say, hey, do you purchase off of the cooperative agreement? Great. We're already on that. So guess what? You don't even have to go to RFP if you don't want to.

[Elvin Freytes]
Interesting. So the vendors have to pay a membership fee as well. Is that part of it?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Gotcha. 

[Elvin Freytes]
And so I noticed that there's a lot of emphasis now on minority-owned businesses, especially to give them opportunities to be vendors, right? And be a part of that mix. So are these cooperatives reaching out? I mean, I don't know if you know this, if you know, it's okay. I'm just curious, do you think they're reaching out to these minority-owned businesses? Hey, you got to get into our cooperative so we can get you an advantage here so you can have an opportunity to have tons of possible clients look at your services or your products.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Not that I'm aware of. Yeah. Okay. I've not seen like any type of outreach to anyone. Yeah. So if a vendor wants to get on one of these cooperative contracts, it's really on them to choose to do it. They would look at the different cooperative purchasing organizations that are out there. And then each one of those organizations has eligibility criteria.

And then, you know, if you meet the criteria, you can go through their application process. It reminds me a little bit of what I went through when I was trying to do like accreditation work for schools. Like, I need to get this program accredited or I need to maintain accreditation for this school. And you have to go to information sessions and you have to learn about their standards. And then you have to prove to them that you meet their standards. So it's a little bit similar where you're like, okay, let me see. Does my organization meet the eligibility standards of this cooperative purchasing organization. And if so, there's a lot of things that I'm going to have to do to apply in the beginning and then show them over time that I'm still meeting all of their standards. And as long as I do that, I will always remain on their list. 

And the outreach I've actually seen happen more often is if a vendor gets themselves on this cooperative contract, they'll start doing outreach to their current clients and their prospective clients to teach them about the cooperative contract. But these organizations that are these cooperative purchasing organizations, they're not doing big marketing or big outreach or anything like that. They're just kind of like, hey, we exist. And if you find out about us, good for you.

[Elvin Freytes]
Yeah. And that's a, I don't know, I guess a blessing and a curse because one is like, well, hey, you know, now this becomes like, what if I wanted access to that? And what if I wanted that advantage for my company? You know, how am I supposed to find out about these things? But then the other side of it is because they are representing publicly funded institutions and they're trying to operate themselves. Like they are, they're nonprofit institutions. They're not spending a lot of their dollars on marketing and outreach.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Yeah, it's a double-edged sword.

[Elvin Freytes]
Yeah. Wow. Absolutely fascinating. You know, this has been so cool. Just, it's amazing. I'm just mind blown by everything you have talked about today. And thank you so much for doing this. You know, we usually ask everyone, what do you see as the future of higher education? And last question. But I thought maybe we would change it up a little bit. First of all, anything that we missed that you wanted to talk about today about Helios, about, you know, RFP process, anything you think that we've missed at all that you wanted to say?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
You know, I, whenever I get asked a question like this, I always want to fill it with something because I have the opportunity to speak and I don't want to waste it. But, but no, I think it's like a really thorough, good conversation. I had a blast. I cannot think of anything else. But if I have the chance to speak a little more about what I'm doing with Helios Education Lab, I think one thing I can share is now that we're doing more of this IT consulting and helping colleges and universities through digital transformation, I'm getting more involved in cooperative contracts than I ever had before. Because IT departments, I believe they are absolutely the wave of the future.

[Elvin Freytes]
The IT department is gonna become one of the most prominent influential departments at a school. That's a really good point, very good point.

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Yeah, they're not necessarily gonna be, you know, the person who shows up and tells you to reboot your computer because it's broken, you know what I mean? Like, every single thing as we move forward is getting connected to technology. A lot of universities, they were set up, you know, decades ago or over a century ago. You know, these universities were set up in days when this technology was not even yet like a dream. You know, no one is even imagining the way that technology is these days. So they don't have infrastructure yet. They don't have budget yet. They don't have even just like the wherewithal to think about the large IT operation that they need. And so they are having to do a lot of outsourcing and they're having to do lots of project-based work. And instead of having to write, you know, 50 RFPs, what they can do is just go straight to these cooperative contracts, find the companies who do what they need and boom, get things done faster. So yes, I've been doing more work in digital transformation. I've really been using these cooperative contracts more and they're great.

[Elvin Freytes]
Wow. That's fantastic. What a huge takeaway that is, by the way. I love when I learn something and it makes me go, yeah, that makes total sense. The IT department, because back in the day when I went to college, I mean, IT department, yeah, your email's messed up or you want to get something printed out, but you know, it's the IT guys, it's always the IT guys. Not anymore. No way. They're leading from the front now. So I love that. And it's just going to continue.

So that's such a great insight. So Amanda, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And let me outro you. So ladies and gentlemen, you've been listening to the amazing, the wonderful Dr. Amanda Opperman, and she is co-founder of Helios Education Lab. Amanda, where can people find you?

[Dr. Amanda Opperman]
Finally on LinkedIn, the best place in the world. helios-education.com. That's where I am.

[Elvin Freytes]
Excellent. I highly recommend if you're listening to this, please connect with Amanda and send this to someone who works with RFPs, please. And say, you got to listen to this episode. This is good stuff. So with that, ladies and gentlemen, you've just edupped.