RFI (Request for Information)
An RFI is an exploratory procurement document used to survey the market before a formal solicitation: which vendors exist, what solutions are possible, and roughly what they cost. It gathers information and shortlists candidates; it rarely commits either side.
Buyers issue RFIs when they know the problem but not the solution landscape. For vendors, an RFI is a positioning opportunity: the answers often shape the requirements of the RFP that follows, so a strong RFI response can tilt the eventual evaluation criteria toward your strengths. RFI answers should educate rather than sell — clear capability statements, honest scoping, and reusable boilerplate kept current in a knowledge base, since the same questions reappear across RFIs with small variations.
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