Last week, I wrote about the Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms’ Request for Proposal (RFP) asking suppliers to put together a new, more cost effective approach to monitoring and measurement of traditional and new media channels.

Well, the December 17 deadline for proposals has passed and I’m pleased to be able to say that we received submissions from several potential suppliers. I want to thank all those who showed interest and to let you know about the selection process.

A brief pause

All too often in the past, my Christmas holiday has been marred by an RFP deadline that fell in the first week of January. I don’t like it when that’s done to me. And my fellow CCPRF members didn’t want to do it to our industry partners. So, we set a pre-Christmas deadline for proposals.

Now it’s up to us to review the proposals. I’m sure you won’t be surprised that many of the CCPRF members are taking a break during the Christmas – New Years season. That means that we won’t be able to evaluate proposals until our members return in January. So, there will be a brief pause in our RFP process to enable everyone to enjoy the holiday season.

The process from here

The CCPRF is striking a subcommittee of members who will meet in early January to review the proposals in detail and then lead a discussion at our full CCPRF January meeting.

If the initial review of proposals yields a clear winner, we’ll contact the winning bidder and the unsuccessful bidders to inform them of the outcome. On the other hand, if there’s no clear winner, we may ask a subset of the bidders to meet with us via teleconference to discuss their proposals prior to determining a preferred supplier.

Bottom line: Our selection process may be wrapped up in mid-January or it could take a few weeks longer.

I’ll post further about this as we work our way through the process.