Framing an HRIS RFP: five questions to settle before you contact a vendor

What is an HRIS RFP?

It is the consultation through which a company describes what it needs from its HR information system (payroll, time and attendance, personnel administration, recruitment, training, talent) and compares the responses of several vendors or integrators on the same basis. Its outcome is not just a vendor's name: it also sets the scope, the timeline, the budget and the split of roles. Hence the importance of the groundwork.

1. Start from the real process, not the documented one

The process in the quality procedure and the one that HR and payroll officers actually follow are rarely the same: parallel tracking spreadsheets, approvals by email, exceptions that have become the rule. That real way of working is what the tool will have to absorb.

Before writing a single requirement, spend half a day with the people who do the work and ask three questions: where do you lose time, where do you make mistakes, what do you re-key? The requirements document that comes out of it is shorter, it avoids buying features nobody uses, and the teams feel heard.

2. Write verifiable requirements

"The tool must be user-friendly" settles nothing. A useful requirement describes a situation, the expected result and how to check it.

Four requirements rewritten to become verifiable

Vague requirement	Verifiable requirement	How to verify it
The tool is user-friendly	A manager approves a leave request in fewer than three clicks from their phone	Timed during the demo
The solution handles multiple companies	An employee transferred from one company to another keeps their history and seniority	Transfer scenario supplied by us
Reporting is comprehensive	Headcount by site on the last day of the month comes out with no reworking in Excel	Export produced on our data
The tool interfaces with payroll	Approved variable pay elements reach payroll before the cut-off, with an error report	Interface described, customer reference questioned

Then class the requirements in three levels (must-have, important, nice-to-have) and weight the scoring grid with the business teams before the responses come in. A vendor that answers "standard" to a must-have requirement without being able to show it has not answered.

3. Decide who will do what once the tool is in place

An HRIS does not say who enters data, who approves, who corrects. If that split is not settled before the choice, it settles itself during the roll-out, usually at the HR team's expense.

Draw the line between the HR department, managers, employees and any shared services centre; write down the service levels and escalation paths. This target organisation becomes a requirement like any other, and it rules out from the start the tools that cannot support it.

4. Count the full cost, not the licence

The licence is the visible part. Over five years, add implementation, data migration, interfaces, training, release upgrades and the internal time spent on administration. Ask every candidate for the same breakdown, on the same scope and the same duration, separating recurring from one-off costs.

The items in a five-year full cost

Item	Type	Question to ask the candidate
Licences or subscription	Recurring	Price per employee, tiers, annual revision
Implementation	One-off	Days planned per phase, what remains your responsibility
Data migration	One-off	History migrated, expected format, who cleans the data
Interfaces	One-off then recurring	Standard connectors or custom development, maintenance included?
Team training	One-off	Formats, number of people, materials provided
Internal administration	Recurring	Estimated time per month for one administrator
Release upgrades	Recurring	Frequency, tests to redo, any cost

Compare five-year totals and look at the internal share: a tool that is cheaper to buy but needs a half-time administrator costs more than it appears.

5. Have them demonstrate on your cases, not on the vendor's script

A standard demonstration shows what the tool does well, never what it does badly. Prepare three or four scenarios drawn from your daily work, with anonymised data: a hire with seniority carried over, a training session cancelled after the invitations have gone out, a payroll close with a variable element that arrived late, an absent manager who delegates their approvals.

Send them to every candidate with the same deadline, ask to handle the tool yourself, and score each demonstration on the same grid, as a group. Be wary of screens that are too smooth, of perfectly clean data and of "that is planned for the next release".

After the project: support, run and application maintenance

A project lasts a few months; the tool will stay for five to ten years. What matters most to your teams is how you will be supported afterwards: when a payslip comes out wrong, when a rule changes, when a release upgrade breaks an interface. Yet it is the shortest chapter in most responses.

Support: levels, channels, hours, language, response and resolution times by severity, with penalties in the contract. A payroll incident on the day of the bank transfer and a question about a report do not call for the same urgency.
Run: who configures a new absence type or a collective agreement, who integrates legal changes, who tests release upgrades and redoes acceptance testing on the interfaces. If it is you, add that time to the full cost.
Application maintenance (AMS): the contract that covers changes and configuration after go-live, often an annual bank of days. Have them spell out what it includes, the lead times, the profiles involved and what happens once it is used up.

What you need in writing before you sign

Topic	What must be written down
Support	Levels, channels, hours, response times by severity, penalties
Legal changes	Delivery rhythm, scope covered, cost included or not
Release upgrades	Frequency, notice period, test environment, responsibilities
Application maintenance	Days included, lead times, profiles, rate beyond the bank of days
Point of contact	A named account lead, frequency of review meetings
Reversibility	Data export format, lead time, cost at the end of the contract

These commitments are negotiated before signature. Afterwards, you live with them. A vendor that shines in demonstration but is vague on support does not deserve first place.

Before you sign: references and your network

Require from each finalist two or three customers comparable in size, sector and scope, live for more than a year, and call them without the vendor: what took longer than planned, did the budget hold, how is support going, what would you do differently?

Ask your professional network too: an HR director or a payroll manager in your sector, an association, an alumni network. A few conversations will tell you which tools are actually deployed in organisations like yours, and how satisfied people are. That feedback is often worth more than a thirty-page written response.

Checklist before launching the consultation

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to frame an HRIS RFP?

Four to eight weeks between the first observations and sending out the document, depending on the number of processes covered and the availability of the teams.

How many vendors should you consult?

Three to five. Fewer, and you lack points of comparison; more, and you lack the time to analyse each response and organise demonstrations on your cases.

What is application maintenance (AMS), and do you need it?

Application maintenance services cover configuration and changes after go-live, often as an annual bank of days. They are useful as soon as nobody in-house is trained and available to administer the tool.

How do you check the references a vendor gives?

Ask for comparable customers, live for more than a year, and call them without the vendor. Round this out with the views of peers in your sector, whom the vendor did not choose.

What it changes

An RFP framed this way takes a few more weeks upstream and saves months downstream: the responses are comparable, the choice can be defended before an executive committee, and you know how you will be supported once the project is over, which is where everything really plays out.

This is the work we do in our HRIS advisory and audit engagements, whatever the vendor in place or under consideration. If you are preparing an RFP, let's talk.