S05E09: RFP Best Practices for LSPs

Intro

Hello and welcome to the Translation Company Talk, a weekly podcast show focusing on translation services and the language industry. The Translation Company Talk covers topics of interest for professionals engaged in the business of translation, localization, transcription, interpreting, and language technology. The Translation Company Talk is sponsored by Hybrid Lynx. Your host is Sultan Ghaznawi with today’s episode.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Welcome to today’s episode of the Translation Company Talk podcast. Governments across all levels represent a major consumer of language services. They have a unique set of requirements for acquiring the supply of language services. Today we are going to be discussing how government procurement is conducted in the context of RFPs and what it means for language services providers.

 

To discuss this important topic, I have invited Shamus Sayed. He is the Chief Operating Officer for Interpreters Unlimited, or IU, which is a full-service LSP based in San Diego, California. He is an operations executive with a business development background in driving sustainable growth through revenue-maximizing strategies and enduring client relationships.

 

Throughout his career, he has secured $3 million in acquisition funding via multiple investors, advised and partnered on business purchase in 2007, and has since grown by revenue by 600%. He has led three strategic acquisitions and oversaw integration into parent company and generated $8 million in revenue through consultative selling in biopharmaceutical and biotech manufacturing.

 

Shamus, welcome back to the Translation Company Talk podcast.

 

Shamus Sayed

Thank you, Sultan. Thanks for having me again.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, it’s so nice to have you back and to hear your voice. I’m so happy you’re doing well. For those people listening to you for the first time, Shamus, can you please provide some background about yourself?

 

Shamus Sayed

Wonderful. Thank you, Sultan. My name is Shamus, of course. I am vice president of Interpreters Unlimited. We are interpreters.com. We’re a national LSP based in San Diego.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Okay. And what have you been up to lately? What’s happening in your corner of the world?

 

Shamus Sayed

Oh, well, sunny San Diego hasn’t been sunny. It’s been raining about two days a week, every week for the last 10 weeks. But despite that, of course, there’s always something to complain about with San Diego weather by local San Diegans. Between work and family, that has always kept me busy. Things here in the LSP world have definitely been interesting, which I’m sure we’ll be talking about here momentarily.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. I know you’re very busy on the forum at the Association of Language Companies. You’re constantly providing expertise there and listening to people’s concerns from other LSPs. How do you see the industry this year so far performing, Shamus? Are there trends and patterns emerging that you’ve noticed that are shaping up the year?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, I think none of which are ever any surprises. M&A activities are still strong. I’m seeing activities or interests almost on a weekly basis. The industry as a whole, obviously, is doing amazing, as we know, which is why we are in this industry. So that’s very much a usual. The trends are obvious. If you’ve been involved in some of the past ALC conversations, AI continues to be the leading conversation, not just in a consumer facing environment, but also AI in a back end and in an operational capacity.

 

Sales continues to be number two. Sales continues to be number three. And then, of course, you get into discussion of cost and costs have definitely increased over the years, especially over the last couple of years. So, the trends are, if I had to identify the top three trends, AI, sales and cost.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about something related to sales you just mentioned. As an expert in offering partnerships with governments at all levels, I believe your company has been at the forefront of public sector language work and we know that it’s been very successful. I would like to get your thoughts today on RFPs and how LSPs navigate through these confusing requirements. At a high level, can you give me a picture of government procurement today? How does it look like?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, great question. The government procurement is very much a hot mess. Always has been and I don’t anticipate it getting any better. There’s an overwhelming mismatch between what we do and what the governments want. Think of the square peg round hole analogy. Clients are writing RFPs without understanding how our services are managed, how we work, how the industry works. We are not selling a widget, nor are we selling a low technical service, selling a sophisticated area service that is delivered by people. Let’s start off with that.

 

They don’t realize that these are actual people providing said services. And these people are highly qualified, highly experienced. So that mismatch has been, and I don’t anticipate that mismatch getting any better. There’s just a general lack of understanding of our industry and what we do and the expertise behind what we do.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That’s why I thought maybe it’s a good idea to bring this education to the industry because you have gone through this so many times. A lot of LSPs actually don’t know what to look for in RFPs or they don’t even look at them because they’re not interesting. So, let’s look at it in terms of what should I know? What should a LSP be looking for at a high level to get from an RFP announcement when they get published on whatever RFP site?

 

Shamus Sayed

First and foremost is feasibility. Does it align, not only feasible from a from an objective standpoint, but is it does it align with your offering and your costing? For example, many times we get excited about seeing an RFP come through that says million-dollar contract and this is what you need to do. And it is kind of in our wheel, not 100 percent. Say about 40 percent in our wheel. So, in our mind, we say, how can we make this work?

 

But then when you dive into it and after you’ve spent several hours, you learn that there’s not an alignment. It’s so far out of your wheelhouse that it may end up costing you more to facilitate this business and back- end cost than you would make on the contract itself. So, we tend to get blinded by the contract value, without truly understanding the feasibility from an operational standpoint. So, the first thing I would suggest to look for is, is it feasible from a technical standpoint and is it feasible from an operational standpoint?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. Now, Shamus, RFPs or requests for proposals and RFIs, which is requests for information, are commonplace in the government sector. You deal with them all the time. But we also see them for large projects from enterprise and corporate sectors as well. What are the major differences that stand out when it comes to purchasing from the enterprise sector or the government?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, let’s focus on the positive. The corporate sector is a much more, in our experience, savvy buyer. They have a better understanding of our collective offering and they have a better definition of what they need and if there’s a mismatch, a mismatch is wrong. If they want X and we deliver Y, there’s the ability to have a conversation to meet halfway so that we can take care of the client in a way that makes operational sense. So overall, in our experience, the corporate buyer, the enterprise buyer is a much more savvy buyer and they are definitely more stringent in their needs. Their needs are very defined. Rather, the impact of them not getting exactly what they need is far greater from a cost standpoint to them.

 

So, there’s a willingness to work together to get exactly what they need. This brings up an example from my biotech days, which is where they were talking about building value. The cost of labor within a government sector is definitely much lower. So, if there’s areas of ambiguity, the cost and manpower to overcome those degrees of ambiguity are much less in the government sector.

 

But in a corporate or enterprise sector, manpower is very expensive. So, the cost of any areas of ambiguity are much greater. So, they want to always ensure that everything, all the T’s and I’s are dotted very specifically in a bidirectional communication versus a unidirectional communication in the government sector.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s dissect the generic government RFP. Can you please outline how they are structured and how should an LSP digest the information from them? I mean, there’s so much information that most of it is probably not even relevant.

 

Shamus Sayed

Sure. Well, the best advice I can give to start off with is read 10 of them. If you read 10 of them, as exhilarating as that sound, you’ll identify a lot of trends and you’ll be able to answer this question directly. But, if I had to say not in any particular order, I would say an outline would be you’ll see an overview of the end. You’ll learn what they want, how they want it and how much they want to pay.

 

Then you’ll see the timeline and of course, the evaluation criteria. That criteria could be either value or price. An RFP tends to be more based on value, whereas an RFQ tends to be based on price. So those are the few factors, few areas, as an outline that we would look for.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

But do you think that there are also things such as, there are additional requirements that they add, such as technical, financial, and so forth? Are those also part of this package or are you just looking at the main RFP?

 

Shamus Sayed

Just looking at the main RFP. These are the basics that we look at just to help determine feasibility. That’s what we’re going for. When you look at this outline, these are the few things I would focus on to determine feasibility and then figuring out how we want to do it.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. You just talked about timelines. That’s a critical component of an RFP and generally they have deadlines and timing associated with them. What are the critical dates that RFP responders should consider when preparing the responses?

 

Shamus Sayed

Sure. Let’s narrow that down into four. One is looking at any mandatory pre-proposal meetings, conferences or responses. Some of those could be “fill out this form to let us know you’re going to bid and you need to do it before you bid and if you don’t do it before you bid, then you’re disqualified”. So, number one, anything that’s required pre-proposal. Number two, due date. Number three, Q&A deadline and then number four, protest deadline.

 

All of those are usually fairly defined in an RFP.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right, and do you have an RFP response team at your organization, Shamus? Should LSPs invest in such teams and what do they look like?

 

Shamus Sayed

Like any position in an organization, you determine if this is an area that you see value in, you’re going to invest in it. If you want someone to build your outbound sales independent of RFPs, then of course, you’re going to invest in the manpower and then the right talent to achieve that objective. Same thing for RFPs. If that’s an area that you want to build and focus on, then of course, you’ll invest in the respective resources.

 

Like I said, like you would in any organization. If that’s going to be an area focus, you’re going to invest in the talent accordingly.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Without going into details, a lot of LSPs would be afraid of having the talent or resources. How far have we come along with things such as tools, you know, chat GPT and so forth to prepare you for these things, because all this information is out there. These models have been trained on RFPs.

 

Shamus Sayed

Yes, they’ve been trained to a degree. We’re still putting that to the test a little bit. That’s where the knowledge of prompting is important. But yeah, we’re using AI to help get a better understanding of RFPs. We’re still trying to see if we can use AI for the purpose of responding. We’re also trying to look at AI potentially to help us understand each RFP and provide standard details.

 

So, we would love to upload an RFP into chatGPT, for example, and let it provide an outline of their structure so that we can easily digest that information. So, if you go to your previous question, when you were asking about providing an outline, it would be great for AI to provide that out for you specific to each bit and we’re still playing with that. It’s still not quite there.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

These tools are new and it will probably take some time for all of us to get used to them in terms of the different applications related to RFPs. Let me ask you, Shamus, about the hubs where RFPs are normally posted. Where do LSPs in the US generally source these RFPs from?

 

Shamus Sayed

There’s a number of portals and in fact, there is no shortage of them. Bidnet is a common one. Of course, there’s all the federal portals, eBuy. If you just Google RFP databases, you’ll have about one hundred and one right there. If you contact any one of those, their sales tactic tend to be pretty aggressive. But there’s a number of resources available that scour everything that’s out there on the Web. As we know, RFPs are all public or at least government RFPs.

 

So these repositories all have their algorithms or whatever they do to scour the web and put it all into one place. Some of these could be free. Some of these could be a couple of hundred a month. And then there are a few that take it to another level, that you subscribe to their service, five-figure annual expenditure. Not only does it provide the RFP, it also provides historical contract information and a little bit more business intelligence to help determine feasibility and help put together a more competitive response.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Speaking of response, as part of that response process, the government has to evaluate all the responses. Do LSPs have to be ready for meetings? You mentioned earlier that they may have these meetings ahead of the response dates. How are these meetings structured? What can you tell us about them?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, pre-proposal meetings are going to be more of a rehash of the RFP itself. They’re more of a, if anything, a formality. Sometimes they are required, but they’re usually no more than an overview of the RFP itself. In my experience, they’re not overly beneficial because here you have the contracts person simply reading the RFP page by page, which you can just as well do.

 

Then you have presentations or meetings that are part of the evaluation process. And those are more common than we realize. If you make it to that stage in the process, you will usually be given decent notice to prepare for the evaluation meeting. They tend to be structured to answer questions or clarification from your response itself. Sometimes a dog and pony show. There are no questions. They just want you to put something together so they get a little bit more personal insight on you and your organization. So those are the types of meetings that we have.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about the strategies. What strategies can LSPs employ to ensure their responses to government translation RFPs or other language related RFPs are not only compliant, but also stand out amongst the competition? Obviously, you can’t talk about the details, you’ve got your own secret sauce, which I completely understand. But let’s talk in generalities, particularly in terms of showcasing capabilities and addressing specific agency requirements.

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, Sultan, that’s the million-dollar question, right? You used to be able to make it visually appealing when you were sending out hard copies. Yes, those were a pain in the ass, no question, but at least you could leverage color present and more physical element to touch and feel. But now everything is electronic, even though I’ll take electronic ten times over physical or hard copies.

 

Having an electronic submission tends to be a little more challenging to create that visual appeal, or when you receive a hard copy and say, “Oh, this is a nice packet, this looks really nice”. You could touch it, they could see it, they could feel it and so that’s kind of where you have the challenges in electronic and hard copy. Like I said, I’ll take electronic ten times over.

 

So, with that being said, using your capabilities becomes the focus. How will you put that response together to bring focus on what matters the most? And that’s the million-dollar question. That’s the area that we’ve been trying to focus on to improve the visual of our offering.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. So, speaking of digital presentation of these documents, we talked earlier about how we can leverage efficiency tools, such as large language models and so forth. What role does technology play in enhancing the quality and efficiency of RFP responses for language services? And how can LSPs leverage technological tools effectively in their proposals?

 

I mean, we have numerous tools today that are basically, from presentations, creating PowerPoints, creating capabilities lists and so forth. We also have the cloud technology that allows us to, for example, reuse RFPs and so forth. What are some of the things that you’re going to be able to do to improve the visual of your offering? What are your thoughts? What are your plans for using technology, for example, in this year, whatever tools are available?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, Sultan, there’s no limit to it. There really is not. And that’s one thing, the takeaway from this question is to truly understand there’s no limit to it. You could find a tool to put together the presentations we were just talking about earlier.

 

You could put your RFP in there and tell it to make a presentation for you. You could say, I don’t understand this question that they’re asking, what does this mean? Throw it in the AI and have it clarified for you. If you have word limits, sometimes you’ll get the proposal with the “respond within 10 pages”. So, you take your hundred-page presentation, you throw it in here, narrow it down to 10 pages.

 

So, there’s all types of ways you can utilize technology to leverage the appeal to your proposal.  If that’s one thing I have to emphasize on this question is, is the database of all the AI websites. So, you go to one site and you could search what you want from an AI tool and it’ll spit it out. So, these are the three companies or the three websites that will do that.

 

So, the only limit here is your thought process. Think about what you might want to do to enhance the quality and to improve the efficiency and search for it and just put AI at the end of it. And you will be surprised of what comes up and play with them. They’re fascinating.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Speaking of which, a related question or follow-up would be, now our colleagues on the government side, on the procurement side, what type of new technologies would they be using to make RFPs more efficient? What would you like to see them use?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, that’s an area that part of me feels like they’re going to be slow to adapt to and utilize the technology. But every time that thought process crosses my mind, I get reminded that we can’t be naive and that can change overnight.

 

So, someone had asked this is just a couple of months ago, someone had asked me, do you see government bidding municipalities looking for AI based interpretation and translation solution? Three months ago, I would have said, no, the buyers are too stuck in their ways and too behind to even think about AI as a solution for them. I said, I don’t see it coming up in an RFP for at least three years.

 

So, I was wrong a month later. So, this is just two months ago, two state government, I’m not going to mention which states, but they are significant states, each released an RFP. One was an RFI. One was an RFP seeking AI based solutions for translation and interpretation.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, technology is moving really fast and I think its adoption is also catching up on the government level.

 

Shamus Sayed

Yes, and we can’t be naive about it, right? When you look at your traditional government buyer, they’re not like you and me. We are forced to think out of the box in everyday business, but they are not, their roles are very defined and they have, unfortunately, usually a very defined box that they work out of.

 

So, the thinking about technology-based solution for services like this is usually far out of their wheelhouse and I say that respectfully, it’s just not something that they’re usually tasked at trying to figure out, but I was wrong. If 2 out of the 50 states were seeking exactly that.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about how we can leverage the human element here and this increasingly competitive landscape of language services. How important is it for LSPs to establish strong relationships with government agencies prior to submitting RFP responses and Shamus, what strategies can they employ to cultivate these relationships?

 

Shamus Sayed

You know, this is an area that we’re still trying to master. We’re not an expert here by any means. In the federal space, we hear that’s where the good stuff comes from, it’s based on your relationship. We don’t have those relationships like that at the federal space. On the flip side and the state and local space, we do have relationships.

 

We don’t feel that is as relevant because the RFP that comes forth is still very defined and still has very defined requirements and submission requirements. So, we could be a hundred percent wrong here, because this is an area that we just have yet to truly master. Yes, we develop relationships once we’re awarded and we build those relationships.

 

But then when the next bid comes around, those relationships say, “oh yeah, that’s great, we hope you win it again”, but that’s as far as it goes.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

In terms of going back to the RFP itself, you talked about how it should be presented and so forth. What elements should be included in a template for something that can be reused? It’s a lot of work to recreate this RFP over and over again. In order to respond to requests from government for language services and how can LSPs ensure flexibility while maintaining consistency across different proposals? I guess a few sections can always be reused, like who we are and what we do and even the pricing schemes.

 

Shamus Sayed

True and you answered the question right there, Sultan. Like I mentioned earlier, if you read 10 bids, as boring as it is, you’ll figure that out pretty quick, right? You’re going to say, “oh crap, I did this. I already wrote this section and a bid I did 10 bids ago or five bids ago, or I wrote something very similar. I just need to tweak a couple of lines, and this could apply for this question”.

 

So, you’ll see very quickly what those common elements are and based on every LSPs respective offerings, you’ll develop consistent and similar standard content. It’s something you’re going to figure out. You’re going to figure those out pretty quick. Human nature usually comes in place. We don’t want to repeat, do repetitive work. And you know, I’ve already done this. And now you’re going to use that as a template.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I can see an application where you just feed in an older RFP response to a large language model like ChatGPT and say, can you adapt it for this RFP?

 

Shamus Sayed

That makes complete sense.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right. How do LSPs balance the need for customization to address specific requirements of each government RFP with efficiency gained from utilizing predesigned templates, as you just mentioned? And do you think there are best practices in creating a template?  Instead of just putting a bunch of pieces of information together, which you can reuse.

 

Shamus Sayed

This is exactly the struggle, Sultan. Every time you think that, you read this RFP. I have all the elements. But then once you read the questions, like, Oh, wait a second. They’re asking for something that’s a little bit different. It’s like 90% there, but there’s a 10% difference in what they need. So, the best practice that I would recommend first and foremost, ensure you’re meeting the submission requirements.

 

This takes precedence over anything else. A misstep here can put you dead in the water, even if you’re the best vendor next to sliced bread. So having a template is great, but as a priority, I would focus on making sure that you’re meeting the submission requirements, not saying, “oh, this template of ours comes pretty close to this question, so I’m going to use it”. That could be that assumption could potentially put you dead in the water and be deemed non-responsive. So you’re not going to be able to get a good result.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Treat it as a math test in school, I guess.

 

Shamus Sayed

Exactly.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let me ask you about RFPs that require pricing or multi-year support. Like, you know, what’s your base year pricing and so forth and options for subsequent years. I’m sure you’ve seen that a lot. What is the best strategy for completing pricing schemes like that?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, Sultan, we’re learning that the hard way. The last few years have shown us that inflation is real, plan and ensure you are financially in a good position, costs do change as we all know. And then of course, strategically price. Again, we’ve learned this one the hard way and over the last couple of years.

 

So, when you look at pricing options for multi-years, make sure you’re financially in a good place, to either maintain or as and when you need, of course, do escalation. When I say financially in a good place, let me clarify. Financially you’re in a good place from just general knowledge of your business to determine if you need to escalate how much debt. There are some bids over the, where we were in years 4 and 5 where we didn’t escalate enough. The last couple of years are 22, 23, 21, 22, you were approaching double digit inflation. Interpreters and translators were coming to you saying, “hey, we’re going to raise our rate” and you didn’t account for that degree of escalation in those bids. So that was a struggle that we were trying to work through.

 

Sponsor

This podcast is made possible with sponsorship from Hyperspace. Hybrid Lynx, a human in the loop provider of translation and data collection services for healthcare, education, legal, and government sectors. Visit hybridlynx.com to learn more.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s talk about how we can make things better. If you could make a change in how RFPs are procured by different government agencies today, what would that be, Shamus? And what would you ask them to do different to make the process more efficient and friendly for everyone involved?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, two suggestions. Number one, engage subject matter experts prior to writing an RFP. As the RFP writer, educate yourself on what you are seeking that will pay itself dividend in the years to come. Number one. And number two, listen to this podcast. So, they themselves are aware of what we as an entry are going through when we receive an RFP and I’m sure this podcast could apply for really any other industry.

 

So, at the bare minimum, ensuring that these government agencies empathize. They don’t even get to sympathize with us. At least empathize with the challenges we see when receiving an RFP with hopes that they could take that into consideration and putting it together when putting it together.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. In closing Shamus, what is your general advice for the LSP community with regards to RFPs and how we can fairly and respectfully maintain a language service delivery and support infrastructure for our government clients?

 

Shamus Sayed

Well, first of all, you want to determine if RFP based business fit in your business development strategy, right. It is lower margin business. It is more consistent, but it’s lower margin. There’s more challenges from one end, but once you understand those challenges, then you can develop a process. They pay differently. They pay slower. Can you manage that from a cashflow standpoint?

 

So, I would start off with asking yourself the question as a business, as an LSP owner, does an RFP response strategy work for you from a business development standpoint? And that’s probably the first question I would make sure that an LSP is good with. Businesses don’t fail because they’re not profitable, businesses fail because of cash. Right?

 

So, you could have a contract and a government contract that could be insanely profitable, but if they’re paying net 60, net 90, which is not unheard of, and then they be laid on top of that, you might not have cash to keep your lights on. So, make sure that like I said earlier, that financially you’re aware and you’ve taken the appropriate step.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What an interesting and fun conversation, Shamus. You obviously made it very relatable and clear given the dry nature of government procurement conversations. I really hope that we were able to make a difference by guiding our LSP colleagues to understand government and their RFP protocols better. And not just that, but also our government colleagues to draft better RFPs and RFIs so they can get better quality responses from us, from our industry.

 

And with that, I want to thank you for joining us. Thank you for your time and effort and I hope we can cover another interesting topic soon.

 

Shamus Sayed

Always here for you, Sultan. Thank you for having me.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

 

It’s time for my roundup of the interview and my analysis as to what has been discussed. The translation and localization industry enables governments around the world to deliver critical services to citizens on a timely manner and supports them in understanding the demographics and diversity of linguistic services consumers.

 

As governments have to grapple with scale, bureaucracy and red tape becomes a challenge for language services providers. Procurement is often a convoluted process and LSPs often don’t participate given the complex requirements. To make government procurement for language services a win-win, it is imperative that both the buyer and the seller side of the localization equation understand each other’s needs and address them better.

 

That brings us to the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Shamus Sayed is a great speaker and I always enjoy speaking with him because there is a learning opportunity. If we were able to help even one of our colleagues today, then the goal of this podcast has been accomplished.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Audible and make sure to give this episode a good rating. Until next time.

 

Outro

Thank you for listening. Make sure to subscribe and stay tuned for our next episode.