How do companies and libraries benefit from the services of OpenRFP?
At the heart of OpenRFP service is a structured format for vendors to present their functionality in a coherent manner to help librarians more clearly understand software in their working environments. OpenRFP provides information about software, not just for Integrated Library Systems (ILS), but for other new processing techniques such as RFID, Federated Search, and ERM; procedures which constantly evolve from technology and improved information processing applications. Libraries and suppliers benefit. In particular, libraries are relieved of the daunting task of constructing RFP and RFI bid documents; they can pick and choose which features are important to them; they can eliminate the bias that can be inherent in “generic” RFPs, or those that are obtained from neighboring libraries; they can easily do comparative analyses with our tools; and they can do all this at very low out-of-pocket cost. The vendors benefit because the costs to complete library Requests generated from OpenRFP
