In this week’s episode of the Healthcare Success Podcast, I sat down with Krista Robertson, Executive Director of Digital Strategy at Roper St. Francis Healthcare, and Ben Cash, CEO of Reason One, to talk about one of healthcare marketing’s least-loved but most common realities: the RFP process.
When I heard about their HCIC.net session on RFPs, I couldn’t wait to speak with them and compare notes. Loyal listeners know I have plenty of my own thoughts on the topic.
The following lively conversation grew out of a popular HCIC session titled “RFPs: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Let’s Make Them Suck Less Together.” And that framing is accurate. For health systems, RFPs can mean months of internal coordination, stakeholder wrangling and requirements gathering on top of an already full workload. For agencies, they can mean dozens of hours spent responding to unclear scopes, undefined budgets, limited access to decision makers and processes that often evolve dramatically after the project is awarded.
For many organizations, the RFP process begins when they plan a major initiative, such as a healthcare website redesign, selecting a healthcare digital marketing agency or implementing a new patient-facing digital platform.
What makes this episode especially valuable is that it doesn’t stay theoretical. Krista and Ben bring both sides of the process to the table—and in this case, they actually went through it together. Krista shares how Roper St. Francis Healthcare took a more intentional approach by aligning internal stakeholders early, researching potential partners before issuing the RFP, narrowing the field to a small, qualified group and focusing less on checklists and more on finding the right long-term partner. Ben explains why that approach led to a stronger outcome—and why so many other RFPs fail when they prioritize procurement mechanics over strategy, trust and fit.
A consistent theme throughout the conversation is this: The best RFPs are not just about buying a platform or comparing prices. They are about finding the right partner, clarifying goals and creating enough dialogue to avoid a preventable mismatch later.
Why Listen?If you’ve struggled with agency or website RFPs in healthcare, this episode offers practical insight from both perspectives.
You’ll hear Krista, Ben and me dig into topics like:• Why so many healthcare RFPs fail to deliver real alignmentBen shares survey data showing that many winning vendors meet expectations only sometimes or rarely—and that project scopes often change significantly after award.• What health systems can do before the RFP to improve the outcomeKrista explains how internal alignment, better requirements thinking, peer conversations and preliminary agency meetings helped her team narrow the field and concentrate on partnership, not just paperwork.• How to balance scope, budget and fit more realisticallyWe discuss why overdefined scopes can be just as problematic as vague ones, why budget clarity remains a major pain point on both sides and why real dialogue matters.• How to make the process more human and more productiveThis episode makes a strong case for communicating early, reducing unnecessary complexity and closing the loop professionally with agencies that invest significant time in the process.
If you’re planning a healthcare website redesign, digital platform project or agency search—and want to avoid wasting time, goodwill and budget—this episode is well worth your time. Tune in now and take the first step toward transforming your RFP process for better results.
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Key Insights and Takeaways
RFPs often fail at the very thing they are supposed to create: alignment.One of Ben’s most striking points comes from the survey data shared in the HCIC session. A large majority of respondents said the winning vendor met expectations only sometimes or rarely, and agencies reported that RFP scopes matched the actual project only sometimes or rarely once awarded. That suggests a structural problem: The process often creates the appearance of clarity without actually producing it.2. Health systems and agencies both experience the RFP process as burdensome—but in different ways.Krista describes the significant internal effort required to align marketing, IT, procurement and leadership before the RFP even goes out. Agencies, meanwhile, are being asked to absorb large volumes of work, often under short deadlines and with limited context. The episode makes clear that both sides have legitimate pain points—and both sides benefit when those realities are acknowledged.3. The best RFP processes start before the RFP document exists.One of the strongest lessons from Krista’s experience is that preparation matters. Her team didn’t simply issue a broad public request and hope for the best. They completed internal requirements work, spoke with peers, identified likely agency candidates and held one-on-one exploratory conversations before formalizing the RFP. That helped narrow the field and improve the overall process for everyone involved.4. Finding the right partner matters more than over-specifying the “thing” being bought.A central shift in Krista’s thinking—and one Ben highlights—is moving from “we need to define every platform feature and function up front” to “we need to identify the right strategic partner, then work together to define the best path forward.” That distinction matters. In many healthcare digital projects, the right answer becomes clearer only after discovery begins.5. Excessively rigid scope definitions can lock everyone into the wrong solution.The episode makes an important point about scope: Health systems commonly define scope based on the current website or digital platform, even when that current state is exactly what they are trying to move beyond. When the RFP is too tightly tied to current features or procurement-style requirements, it can limit strategic thinking and make it harder for the selected partner to solve the real problem.6. Budget is both the biggest pain point and one of the most important conversation pointsBen notes that agencies consistently want more budget guidance, while health systems want better internal budget clarity and easier ways to compare costs across vendors. Krista offers a useful perspective from the client side: In her case, the RFP process itself helped define the budget and provide the details needed to secure internal funding. That’s a practical reminder that budget conversations don’t always have to begin with a fixed number—but they do need honesty and structure.
7. Early dialogue reduces wasted time and improves fit.Several moments in the conversation reinforce a simple but important truth: Talking to each other early helps. Initial meetings can quickly reveal whether there is chemistry, whether the agency understands the health system’s needs and whether both sides are realistically aligned. That is far more efficient than dragging many vendors through a long, document-heavy process with little chance of fit.8. The process should focus on outcomes, not just checklists.Ben makes a strong case that RFPs should be tied to larger organizational strategy and desired outcomes rather than simply inventorying existing features and functions. In the case of Roper St. Francis, discussing the organization’s broader strategic plan helped create a more meaningful conversation than a spreadsheet of website requirements alone ever could.9. Human communication matters—even inside formal procurement processes.This episode repeatedly emphasizes the value of communication: setting deadlines, offering opportunities to ask questions, fostering real-time dialogue when possible, and treating agency respondents as people rather than faceless vendors. Even when formal requirements limit flexibility, small moments of transparency and responsiveness can make the process far more productive.10. Closing the loop is both professional and practical.Krista and Ben both emphasize something agencies often wish happened more often: post-decision feedback. When agencies invest significant time in a response, even a short debrief can help them improve and preserve the relationship. It’s also simply the professional thing to do.11. A smaller, more intentional bidder list often serves everyone better.Rather than inviting as many vendors as possible, Krista advocates filtering work upfront. That saves time for the health system and agencies and increases the odds that participating agencies are viable partners. In a process this labor-intensive, thoughtful narrowing is not exclusionary—it is respectful.12. RFPs work better when both sides understand each other’s constraints.One of the strongest themes in the episode is empathy. Agencies do many more RFPs than health systems and have more experience with the mechanics, while health systems are balancing internal politics, procurement rules and budget realities. Better outcomes come when both sides recognize those constraints and work together to address them.
“The best RFPs are not just about buying a platform—they’re about finding the right partner.”Krista RobertsonExecutive Director of Digital Strategy, Roper St. Francis Healthcare
How to Run a Healthcare Marketing Agency RFP: Lessons from Both Sides
Healthcare marketing RFPs are different from many other procurement processes. They involve complex stakeholders, regulated environments, long timelines and strategic decisions that can shape patient experience and digital infrastructure for years.
Based on my conversation with Krista Robertson and Ben Cash—and my own experience working with health systems—several principles consistently lead to stronger outcomes.
Start with internal alignment before writing the RFPMany healthcare RFP challenges originate before the document is ever written.Marketing leaders often need to align stakeholders across:• Marketing and communications• IT and digital teams• Procurement• Compliance and legal• Executive leadershipWithout that early alignment, the RFP may include conflicting goals, unclear scope or unrealistic expectations.As Krista explains in the episode, Roper St. Francis Healthcare spent time clarifying internal goals and requirements before issuing the RFP. That preparation helped ensure the process focused on the right problem rather than simply recreating the existing website or platform.
Research agencies before inviting them to participateOne of the most effective ways to improve the RFP process is to reduce the number of agencies invited to participate.Rather than issuing a sweeping public request, Krista’s team:• Spoke with peers at other health systems• Identified agencies with relevant healthcare experience• Held exploratory conversations before the formal process beganThis allowed the team to invite a small, highly qualified group of agencies, saving time and improving response quality.For agencies, this also signals respect for the significant effort required to produce a thoughtful proposal.
Focus on outcomes, not just features.Many healthcare website or digital marketing RFPs focus heavily on feature lists:• CMS functionality• Search tools• Integration requirements• Design componentsWhile these details matter, Ben notes that the most successful RFPs begin with organizational outcomes, such as:• Improving patient access to care• Supporting service line growth• Enhancing digital patient experience• Enabling scalable content managementWhen agencies understand the broader strategic goals, they can recommend better solutions rather than simply responding to a checklist.
Create opportunities for real dialogue.RFPs often limit communication to written questions and answers. But early conversations can dramatically improve the process.Initial meetings allow both sides to assess:• Cultural fit• Strategic alignment• Understanding of healthcare challenges• Realistic scope and expectationsEven within formal procurement rules, creating opportunities for dialogue can reduce misunderstandings and prevent mismatches later in the project.
Treat the RFP as the beginning of a partnership.A healthcare marketing agency relationship typically lasts several years and may involve:• Website strategy and development• SEO and content strategy• Paid media• Patient acquisition programs• Digital experience optimizationBecause of that, the RFP process should concentrate on partnership potential, not just price comparisons.As Krista puts it:“The best RFPs are not just about buying a platform—they’re about finding the right partner.”
Healthcare Website or Agency RFP Checklist
If you’re planning a healthcare marketing agency RFP or website redesign RFP, consider answering these questions before issuing the document.Internal alignment• Are marketing, IT and leadership aligned on goals?• Is the project tied to organizational strategy?• Are stakeholders committed to the timeline and resources required?Scope and outcomes• What problems are you trying to solve?• What patient or consumer experiences need improvement?• What organizational outcomes will define success?Agency selection• Have you identified agencies with healthcare expertise?• Are you inviting a manageable number of participants?• Do the agencies understand regulated healthcare environments?Budget and timeline• Is there a realistic budget range?• Are internal stakeholders aligned on funding?• Is the timeline feasible for both agencies and internal teams?Communication process• Are there opportunities for questions and discussion?• Will agencies receive meaningful feedback after the decision?• Are expectations clearly communicated throughout the process?Taking time to address these questions early can dramatically improve both the efficiency of the RFP process and the quality of the eventual partnership.
Common Healthcare Marketing RFP Mistakes to Avoid
In our experience—and as reflected in this conversation—several patterns consistently lead to poor RFP outcomes.Inviting too many agenciesLarge bidder lists create unnecessary work for agencies and make evaluation harder for health systems.Over-specifying the current solutionMany RFPs describe the existing website or marketing approach in great detail, which can unintentionally lock the project into outdated assumptions.Lack of budget clarityWhen agencies have no sense of budget parameters, proposals can vary widely in scope and realism.Treating agencies purely as vendorsHealthcare marketing agencies are often long-term strategic partners. Evaluating them solely on price or platform familiarity can miss the deeper capabilities needed for success.Limited post-decision communicationClosing the loop with participating agencies helps maintain relationships and improves future processes.
Why Healthcare Marketing RFPs Matter More Than Ever
Healthcare organizations are increasingly relying on digital platforms and marketing partners to support:• Patient acquisition• Service line growth• Consumer experience• Physician referral strategies• Brand developmentBecause these initiatives often depend on external expertise, the agency selection process plays a critical role in long-term success.When done well, a healthcare marketing RFP creates alignment, clarity and strong partnerships. When done poorly, it can create confusion, frustration and projects that fail to deliver their intended impact.The goal of the process is not simply to compare vendors—it’s to identify the partner best equipped to help the organization achieve its strategic goals.
Frequently Asked Questions About Healthcare Marketing RFPs
What is a healthcare marketing agency RFP?A healthcare marketing agency request for proposal (RFP) is a formal process used by hospitals, health systems and healthcare organizations to evaluate and select a marketing or digital agency partner. It typically includes project goals, scope requirements, evaluation criteria, timelines and proposal instructions.When should a health system issue an RFP for a marketing agency?Healthcare organizations typically issue an RFP when:• launching a website redesign• selecting a digital marketing agency• replacing an existing agency relationship• implementing a new digital platform or CMSHowever, many experts recommend conducting preliminary research and conversations with agencies before issuing a formal RFP.How many agencies should be invited to a healthcare RFP?Most experts recommend limiting RFP participation to a small group of highly qualified agencies, typically three to six firms. Inviting too many agencies can create unnecessary work for both the health system and the participating agencies without improving the outcome.What is the biggest mistake in healthcare RFPs?One of the most common mistakes is focusing too heavily on feature lists or procurement requirements rather than strategic outcomes and long-term partnership fit.
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Note: The following AI-generated transcript is provided as an additional resource for those who prefer not to listen to the podcast recording. It has been lightly edited and reviewed for readability and accuracy.
Read the Full Transcript
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Hello everyone, and welcome to the Healthcare Success Podcast. Today I’m going to cover a topic that—I don’t know, RFPs (sigh). It’s not most people’s favorite topics. So if you look at the RFP process from both sides, I think everyone should agree we should just do something different. So today, I’m actually interviewing two esteemed guests.
Ben Cash and Krista Robertson are both joining us today. And I should give proper credit: Our friends over at HCIC. The basis of our conversation happened at a conference—an HCIC earlier last year. First of all, welcome Ben. Welcome, Krista.
Do me a favor and just introduce yourself, what you do, what your role is. That’ll give some context for our discussion today.
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): I’m Krista Robertson, and I’m the Executive Director of Digital Strategy for Roper St. Francis Healthcare. It’s a regional health system based out of Charleston, South Carolina. And so I oversee their website, social media, reputation management for the system.
Ben Cash (Reason One): Ben Cash, CEO of Reason One. We’re a full-service digital agency that serves the healthcare industry.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): All right, good. So the session was, “RFPs: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Let’s Make Them Suck Less.” Let’s start off. I can’t resist: Why does everyone hate RFPs so much? I mean, let’s call it like it is, right?
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): Ben, from your perspective as the agency, you can answer that one.
Ben Cash (Reason One): Clearly, I can lean into this. There’s a lot of baggage there. I’m not gonna lie. But I also want to recognize, before I start trashing RFPs, some of our best client partnerships started with an RFP. So it’s not all bad. There’s some good that can come of it. You read the title there, there was one word missing from that title. At the end, it was “How Do We Make RFPs Suck Less Together?”
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I love that, yeah.
Ben Cash (Reason One): What we wanted to do with that process was bring health systems and agencies to figure out, how can we do this together? How can this be less painful because health system workers have full-time jobs keeping the lights on and doing all the things that they’re doing, wearing lots of hats, and when you add an RFP to it, it just makes their lives so much more challenging. And they have their own challenges wrangling their own internal stakeholders and getting alignment and those things, even before they show up to an agency.
So I learned a lot in the process of doing that panel from their challenges. We have challenges as well. Something that stood out to me in preparation for that panel, we did a survey. We had a pretty good response. It was both agencies, software vendors and health system marketers and IT professionals. The stat that stood out to me was that 65% said that the winning vendor only sometimes or rarely met expectations.
88% of the agencies said that the RFP scopes only sometimes or rarely matched the project once awarded—which is like, WOW. There is definitely some suckage that is happening there, and what was interesting, too, is that no one said “always.”
So the RFP rarely delivers on its promise of alignment. To me, that is where RFPs suck. And where they fail, often, is they fail to achieve alignment and then alignment comes later in the project, and that’s painful when you have a contract and you’re trying to deliver something under tight constraints and you’re discovering all the things that you didn’t discover in the RFP.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Very good. Krista, what are your thoughts?
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): I think from both sides, it’s a very long process. A lot of writing, and just for us a lot of navigation trying to align internally and bringing your partners together so that they have buy-in on the project. So it’s just a lot of prep work from our perspective as a health system, and for agencies, then we’re asking so much of them: answering a lot of questions, reviewing a lot of requirements, and then in a short timeframe they have to respond to that. So I think it’s just a lot of work for all clients and for the agencies as well.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So I’m gonna come right back to your preparation in just a moment, but I’ll just throw in my two cents here. So obviously, Healthcare Success is a leading agency in the space. I would say last year, we probably received for sure our record year of RFPs. And that’s because of a lot of things. And what we noticed is, just like you said, Ben, some of our favorite clients come from RFPs.
We just actually won a couple, including one that was highly competitive. It was a large one, and out of 12 agencies, we won. But the comment you said earlier about it being so different, it was very different. Where we ended up versus where we started was completely different. It ended up being a 6-month process. It’s a global company, so I get it. And we’ve become very good friends. I’ll probably have them on this podcast here shortly.
But it is an interesting process, and different companies have different rules around the process, and some are better than others. We’ll get into that a little later.
But before I digress too much, Krista tell me about just the level of preparation. Because I can say from an agency standpoint, we can tell which ones are better thought through and the new thing, by the way, is ChatGPT RFPs.
We had a single-location doctor recently—which we don’t really work with—sent us an RFP with 30 pages long. And it was a $3,000 budget, and it was like, “How do you do my social media, my paid search, my SEO…?” So I got back to him and said, “You need some help. That’s really not how you want to approach this.”
So it’s clearly flawed. We were talking offline. Ben, you clearly did a great job preparing. So Krista, let’s talk about what you can do to prepare to make it a better process.
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): First, we really brought all of our partners together, so IT, marketing, procurement. And to really give them an overview of the project and get alignment and buy-in before moving forward. So that was the main thing we did internally. But after that, my team, our digital team, really thought through all of our current technologies, all of the things that we wanted to replace, how we can improve things and really developed a requirements document.
Because not only while the agency we were looking for is really our web partner, they needed to have all that information up front because they need to understand if they can support our needs.
And so we did all of that prep work before writing the RFP. And then before we even initiated the RFP process, we also took several months going to conferences, talking to peers to identify web agencies that we may want to consider.
And then from there, we scheduled some one on ones with those agencies to get to know them, to understand what platforms they support. Are they agnostic? Would they fit with our team? Did our personalities mesh? And we really wanted to find an agency that could support our small team. We have a very small team and they really need to be an extension of our existing team. And so we want a good partner.
And then from that point, we narrowed it down to five agencies that we actually invited to be part of the RFP process. And from there, we had three in-person presentations and then ultimately we awarded the finalist.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That’s great. So you didn’t do an RFI process, right? A request for information. You instead interviewed the agency. Is that how it worked?
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): Yeah. We just wanted to kind of meet them on a personal level, understand who they were, what kind of platforms they built on, more about their team and what they could offer. And those were really individual one-on-one conversations.
And then when we sent the RFP, we had a lot of our requirements already in the document for them to review and respond to and answer questions and ultimately making sure that they could support our needs or had platforms that could support our needs.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That’s great. I would say I’m betting money that the agencies that were involved really appreciated that. And the reason I’ll talk about, I’m going to say aside for a moment, the, you know, as an agency, we see lots of RRPs of all different shapes and sizes.
You know, at one, at the extreme end on the not so great side, we had an agency search firm sent us an RFI of 80 pages as RFI not the RFP and it said things like you know they wanted like a deck with a bunch of, or I’m sorry, paper and this many samples and all these things this is the RFI stage and they said, “Oh by the way the incumbent is in and we give strong favorites to people within six miles of our offices.”
And they sent it out to dozens of people and they wondered they were mad that we didn’t respond. “You guys, we’re busy, we can’t do that. That doesn’t make sense.
And so I would just say from my standpoint as an agency owner, I love the way you guys did that. Having meetings beforehand, like rather than waste everybody’s time. “Let’s see if it’s a possible fit” rather than asking everybody in the planet. It’s a lot easier for you; it’s easier for the agency.
An RFI is another way to go. Sometimes you’ll have rules they have to follow so an RFI at least will narrow it down to who should participate. But I think that chemistry part’s really, really important. We can maybe talk about that a little bit later. But just having sort of the RFP, and I recognize some people have to do this, right? There’s some government agencies or whatever, they have to do it all in a certain way.
But just sort of throwing the RFP over the castle wall and hoping somebody reads and understands the context, in my experience, isn’t ideal. You know, it’s certainly it’s OK to follow the RFP. But having that kind of interaction, I think, is really important.
Ben, before I move on to your next stat, do you have any comments on that part of it? Because we’re going to talk about your next.
Ben Cash (Reason One): Yeah, for sure. So we were fortunate to be the winner of the Roper RFP and are currently in the implementation phase with Krista and her team. And so we have a unique perspective on the process and what that was like. And it was, as she described, it was a very inclusive, thoughtful process. And we felt like we were going to get to know a potential partner.
What was interesting is, you know, I’ve known Krista for years, maybe over 10 years or something like that. We’re both in Charleston. And what was interesting was when she was talking about starting that RFP process, I remember running into you at HMPS one year, Krista. And it’s like, and you were just on the struggle bus with this thing. Like, “I want to get this right. We have to get this right.” And I remember you’re like, “Our current RFP is like countless pages of features and functions and CMS requirements and these things.
And that’s what a lot of RFPs start as, right? Because you think, well, I’m building this thing, so shouldn’t the RFP be about this thing? And what was refreshing, and I saw, I was sort of, I felt like I got a window into your thinking and your shift that you made, which was that you had a revelation that this was not about selecting the right platform or the right scope or capabilities. It was about finding the right partner.
And once you found the right partner, then together you can figure out what the right scope is and what the right strategy and the right platform is together. And I really respected that. And it showed in the way that you all ran your RFP. And it also showed in the way that the collaboration was afterward because we didn’t inherit all these predefined requirements that prevent us from being a strategic partner and saying, “Let’s try this, let’s go here. What do your stakeholders think?”
I think that’s often the challenge of an RFP is that on one end of the spectrum, sometimes it’s very vague, but on the other end of the spectrum, sometimes people come in too tightly defined. And when procurement gets involved, they want it to be this proposal or this detailed scope of work. And when you send your proposal, they want it to be an executable contract. And that is just not feasible.
So that’s why I really respect Krista and her team and the way that they ran this. And it really did set us up for success in the actual project to build something amazing because we weren’t bound by an RFP document.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So I think that’s really a great insight the yeah like they again they’re all different and the ones that are more outcomes based like “This is what we’re trying to achieve” versus you know every little detail and I think you’re right ben about the procurement because procurement is trying to get apples for apples because they’re focused on price, so like “What do you charge for the Gizmo 2000?” “I think the Gizmo 2000 is a bad idea. We don’t charge anything for it.” “Well, it’s not in the RP.” So it’s like the idea of thinking about outcomes, ideally, and informing the process, ideally through pre-meetings, I think is a great one.
Another part that I want to go back to what Krista said, the inclusiveness. So I have a bunch of people from health systems showing up that are pretty respected folks coming up to some podcasts. Actually, they’ll probably appear before yours will.
The theme throughout from the CMO, from the consultants, the various people I’m interviewing is back over and over and over again about building relationships and building inclusivity within a hospital health system, because it’s so hard to get anything done.
And so, Krista, I think that’s great that you guys did that. You got that in from the beginning. So it sounds like it was off to a great start. And obviously it’s ending well for you guys. I want to go back to your deck, though, or some of the data you had. You said agencies do three times as many RFPs as health systems. Tell me more about that. Curious to hear about the context there.
Ben Cash (Reason One): Sure. You know, I think from an agency perspective, we do a fair amount of RFPs because it’s how we get most of our business. Because understandably, no healthcare system wants to put agencies through this. Many times they’re required to do this, right? Depending on where their funding is or the type of organization. And it’s understandable. So this is a natural process that has to happen.
But as a result, agencies do a lot more RFPs. They have a lot of experience with them.
And many health systems only go through a handful of these over the years because sometimes if you find the right partner, you don’t need to do that for a while because they can service you for a number of years.
So there’s definitely an imbalance there. And I think there’s an opportunity on both sides for each of us to understand what the others go through. And part of why we wanted to bring this panel to HCIC and have this dialogue was because we wanted a level set, to have that dialogue outside of the normal RFP process.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Totally makes sense. Krista, did you have any comment on that in terms of the experience level? You just mentioned that it was hard when you haven’t done these every day. Any other additional comments to that? Again, how did you do such a good job not having done a lot of this before?
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): Well, I just think that, like Ben said, when I was looking at the existing RFPs, it just had so much information in it and just didn’t seem necessary because it wasn’t meeting our goal. We really were just wanted to focus on the partnership and not necessarily the technology yet. And so removing all of that and only leaving the real content, what we really wanted to get down to, and understanding their partnership, what are their capabilities, who’s on their team, can they support us?
And we were looking for a long-term relationship because, again, we have a very small team. So it goes back to being very important about their team and personalities and how they operate and work. And so that’s what we really wanted to focus more on in the RFP process was really the partnership because it was so important to us.
Ben Cash (Reason One): I wanted to yes in that because I think and I think where that makes me think of, Krista, is when we hire colleagues, we hire employees. Right. We’re not we’re not giving them homework and making them produce a bunch of deliverables and sort of like react to, hey, there’s this project. If we hire you, there’s this project that you’re going to work on for the next six months. You know, tell us what your solution is for that. Right.
We talk to them as a human being we’re trying to understand fit do I want to work with this person for the next few years right and yet when we’re looking for an agency partner or a health system partner depending on how this RFP works, we forget that that we’re really just looking for fellow human beings that we’re going to go through some tough work together and your process, I feel, gave the opportunity to have that human connection and go could I you know, am I going to be in the shit with these people for a year, right? Excuse my French, but like, because, you know, the projects are hard enough.
So I really appreciated that. It felt more like you were hiring a colleague in that process, asking real questions as opposed to checklists, which doesn’t help anybody.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): You know, it’s funny that the stat you mentioned earlier, 65% of marketers say that winning vendor only some only sometimes or rarely meets expectations. With 65 I think a lot of that may be because the expectation is correct in the first place, right, so it’s to be really clear on what it is you need and to communicate that and also, like I said a moment ago, is things change by time these RFPs can go on for months and by the time you get there oh suddenly the budget is like half of what it was or you know or something new has been entered and so it can be very difficult to do that.
You have another, some stats on, I just want to stay high level here about where the marketers are spending their time versus the agencies are spending their time. And, you know, what can we learn from that?
Ben Cash (Reason One): Sure. Yeah. I think, you know, what was interesting in the results of the survey was there was a couple of key areas that had overlap between system and agency. And one of those was cost, right?
Agencies’ number one request is for budget guidance, full stop. Health systems want internal budget clarity and alignment and more standardized cost breakdowns for easier valuation from the agencies, right? So in essence, budget is the top priority and the top pain point, right? So it’s this sort of strange duality.
And I think that’s understandable because there’s a trust gap. And I can understand that from a system side because if you’ve had negative experiences with vendors who really aren’t providing the value or there’s not a trust there in the relationship, the notion is they’re going to fishbowl that budget, right? You grow to fit the budget as opposed to being lean and respectful of your budget and producing value. And I think that means that systems sometimes don’t want to provide that budget. I understand that.
On the agency side. You know, and Stewart, I know you can appreciate this. Sometimes we have smaller projects, less complexity, and they might be a lower end budget. And then you have large projects, could be easily seven-figure projects and last a year and a half. And you don’t know what it is yet, because you’re at the point of maximum ignorance in the relationship, right? In that sort of cone of uncertainty, if you will.
And the challenge is that in the RFP process, we can’t often recognize that inherent pain point. So that was one of the ones that stood out to us in the process was budget. How do we break that?
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Totally makes sense. And from the, I think the discussions you guys had earlier too, that you mentioned, which again, we welcome that. Like, you know, like when we talked, when we have, sometimes clients will call us in advance and say, “We have to do an RFP.” And we’re like, “Would you like to have a meeting beforehand?” And like, “Nobody else has asked us for that.” Like, you’re kidding, really?
Because I think that’s really important is just frame it and understand where you guys are going. And then, you know, we often recommend… and in most cases they seem to want to do this is have us present it versus as I said earlier just throw it over the castle wall because then there’s no chance to respond with questions you’re right, I can get that lack of trust, but if both sides are standing across a lake trying to do business together it’s really hard and when it comes to budget, some things are just not realistic. It’s like you can’t do all that let’s pick a phase one but if you’re not talking like real human beings then it’s like that can’t happen so the the opportunity for a mismatch is there.
Krista what would you say from your standpoint any specific challenge you just think was a big deal and pretty common?
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): Well, I wanted to speak about the budget thing for a moment, if that’s okay. So one of the things that we used the whole RFP process, we didn’t have budget going into this project. We didn’t have a defined budget yet. And so we really used this process to develop our budget and asked the agencies to kind of give us the low end and high end, obviously not knowing exactly what we would be choosing for our platforms and the overall cost from the discovery and just all the work that needed to be done.
But each of the agencies did a great job of helping us define what that looked like. And then ultimately, because Ben’s team won the RFP, we worked a little bit more closely with them to really develop what that budget needed. And we went and submitted that to our senior leadership on the high end to try to get the budget for the project.
So we really used the RFP to determine what our budget was and to then be able to ask leadership to fund this. And we had the detail behind what it was going to pay for, you know, like what is each line item cost. So I think that really helped too for us to get the buy-in and support from senior leadership that ultimately gave us the funding for the project.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That totally makes sense. So for the sake of time, we’ll be attaching the PowerPoint to the show notes for this podcast on our website at healthcaresuccess.com. So if you want to see the actual detailed stats, you can go there to see them.
I’m just looking through a couple things. One is the top system challenge. The number one thing according to the data that you guys got was developing scope requirements, which is not surprising.
I thought it was interesting. Number two is coordinating team schedules. Like it just shows you the world of health systems and like how hard that is. Number three was budget clarity and alignment. And then internal stakeholders were some of the key ones.
The agency side was, to me, not surprising at all. Poorly defined scope, limited access to decision makers, too many bidders, and lack of clear evaluation, and then the volume of responsible requirements.
That last one seems, I don’t know, Ben, in your experience, but that seems to have gotten better in recent years. It used to be, give us 10 copies of, you know, printed out 80-page decks with sample creative, and, you know, those… often we just said, “No thanks, we can’t do this. It doesn’t make sense.” And the sad part is the when that kind of a process happens or there’s unlimited numbers of people bidding you know dozens of people it’s like as an agency time is your currency ensure what you have and so in the attempt from the system side of the client side to you know not leave any stone unturned they can actually miss some really good agencies that might be a perfect fit so I can see yeah I can see why and Ben as you mentioned earlier, some people have to do this right so if you’re working with we had a uh RFP from a public hospital they have to invite everybody who respond anybody who wants to respond can, so they’re sifting through you know 100, which must be great from their side but do you guys have any other comments on either of these things some of the challenges that either you know Krista that really resonate with you or Ben any of the ones that resonate with you?
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): I mean, I think I’ll just go back to one of the reasons why we wanted to only invite a small group to the RFP process. Not only is it a lot of work for the agency, but it’s also a lot of work for our team to read through those RFPs and then determine who do we want to bring in for in-person presentations. So I think on both sides of the coin, it’s just it’s a very arduous process.
So I think doing that work up front and trying to weed out agencies that we just don’t feel are fit. And then that gives both of us our time back, because time is money.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): If only everybody thought the same way. Ben, any other comments on that?
Ben Cash (Reason One): No, I agree. I mean, you know, it sort of reminds me of dating, right? Sometimes, you know in the in the first five minutes, you sit down at the table and it’s like, you know right away this is not a fit.
You might have different goals or the person just might, you know, you just don’t get the right vibes. And I think, you know, to Krista’s process, just getting that first gut check. Sometimes you really know. It doesn’t take long and you don’t have to read a 200-page RFP response to figure out that an agency is not the right fit for you. So I think that just sort of human gut check is a great way to do it and really quickly get the funnel down before you start introducing all the complexity of documents and ad response times and you know um
I will say that I got one one trigger on that where we were considering replying to a um a large RFP out of California uh and they sent we’ve gotten into the process late and they sent us the Q&A which is sometimes the beginning of the process. Agencies can submit questions and then they will send back an aggregated list of the questions from all the agencies.
And I want to say it was like 600 questions or something like that that came back and consulted. And so we’re out. We got out because, you know, I could not imagine, Krista, being on your side and having to answer 600 questions, even if they were all cut and paste, we’re not willing to answer at this time.
Just the time investment there is just, yeah, I can’t imagine.
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): I mean, the limited questions we got in compiling took a lot of time. And of course, we tried to adhere to our deadlines that we had committed to. But at times it got tough. And then when it did, we communicated with the agencies to let them know that we might be delayed and why we’re delayed. But yeah, I mean compiling all those questions, answering all those questions, again, it just goes back to it takes time on both sides.
And, you know, to have to do that for 12 different agencies is just would just be just mind-numbing.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Yeah, for sure. So the other thing I thought was interesting from your survey was that scope clarity was the cause of pain for both sides. So. I guess, Krista, you’ve created the first scope. Give me some comments on that. And I’d love to hear Ben’s comments as well.
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): Yeah, again, we just kind of assessed what we already had and more of versus like laying out requirements. It was more about giving the lay of the land to the agency so that they could more respond and start thinking about how they could support us. And I think that worked out better than like having this whole list of requirements and they have to respond to that and it’s just more of like they under they can see what our lay of the land is, they can see where we want to go, and then that also kind of uh lets them know whether they feel they would be a good fit and want to respond to the RFP.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Very good. Ben?
Ben Cash (Reason One): Yeah I I you know I think the challenge with scope is that health system teams—their point of reference, their muscle memory, is on their current website, which may have evolved or devolved over the course of 10 years, right? And so this is their point of reference and the features and the functions and things.
 And so it’s natural that that’s sort of the starting place. And that can be kind of messy and hard to wrangle that and communicate that clearly in an RFP document about what you need and what you want.
This, as you said earlier, this should be about outcomes and more about what is the larger organizational strategy? What is your overarching digital strategy? And what are the things that we want to do and build? And what is the scope like to achieve those things, right?
Because oftentimes, if the scope is reflective of what you currently have, we’re replacing that. There’s a reason that we’re replacing that. So what I loved about Krista and her team in the process, and I remember this in the in the RFP because we came in talking about their 2030 strategic plan and everything that we talked about in our response and our pitch laddered up to that strategic plan.
And I remember it was Kathy Smith at the end of it. She said, you know, was talking about that plan, that strategic plan and asking us questions about it. And that gave us something really central to have a conversation about as opposed to the checklists and those spreadsheets and those kind of things. So I think when we shift from a feature function checklist mindset to a strategy and outcomes mindset, scope is not what we’re solving for in that moment. And that’s literally what the project itself is for.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So the next comment or next section of your PowerPoint was about communicate early and often. And I would say, you know, I think, again, starting with interviews prior to narrow it down a little because the understandable challenge that health systems often have, either individually or collectively, because it could be just one person just naturally. You know, humans, sometimes people feel like they feel either more sort of trusting and open and others are not. Some are like, you know, I don’t…
I had somebody once say, “Oh, don’t take it personally Stewart. I don’t trust anybody. It’s just, it’s my nature, right?” So you have that kind of dynamic and you’re talking about big money in an area you don’t fully understand, right? You can kind of imagine how bad it is to have that noise with your BMW dealer going in, you’re like, what am I going to be facing? But it’s now we’re talking a million dollars, right? So it’s, I totally get it.
But I, I think that by having some of those preliminary meetings up front, you’re able to narrow down the scope. You’re able to narrow down the strategy. But you’re also able to build some trust. You could actually deal with a human. Because like I said, it’s a little easier if you’re at least at the same table as opposed to across the river trying to figure out big things.
And then, Ben, you mentioned something I think was really great too. Like an agency, if it’s good, is looking at it strategically. And they’re thinking through like, well, how does this fit with a bigger picture? And how does, you know what are we trying to achieve whereas the vendor mindset is how much is it going to cost and what is this widget cost versus that widget, so I mean you can do it that way but you’re not going to get the best result typically. right. because you’re looking at just the piece of it. Do you agree Krista with that?
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): Â I would agree. Yeah, I would definitely agree.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): You guys had a discussion at the session about how to get more open communication. Any comments on that beyond the stuff we’ve already talked throughout the process?
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): I think it was just important to set deadlines for things and then also just acknowledge that you’re here. If they have questions, send them. We’re open to that.
You know, I just felt like throughout the whole process, there were good conversations between the agencies or between myself and the agencies as we were working through the RFP process.
So I don’t know. I think that’s important. It goes back to just the human nature of things and really getting to know the people and knowing if they’re a good fit for you.
Stewart Gandolf (Heatlhcare Success): All right. Great. Ben, any comments on that too?
Ben Cash (Reason One): Yeah, yes and to fit, Krista. I think that was the beauty of those initial conversations is that in an hour, you can really gauge fit in a variety of things, and then you’re not wasting each other’s time. So I think fit is the key in communication early on. It’s interesting.
I was a digital consultant who was attending the RFP panel we had in Vegas and was helping another health system run an RFP and took one of the ideas that one of the panelists had shared about for the Q&A sessions you know once you’ve received the RFP the agencies are going to have questions rather than submitting them in written form and then aggregating and sending them back they had another touch point of 30- to 60-minute Q&A sessions the marketers and the agency folks and just having a dialogue right real-time conversation as opposed to a bunch of cryptic questions in a spreadsheet. So that was really helpful.
And I also think if there are opportunities throughout the process to have a dialogue and create real human back and forth, I understand that sometimes there are reasons why that can happen, but it’s important to find those opportunities. And the last thing I will say is even when the RFP is done, we can all learn something from it. And this is an area where I think, you know, if health systems want agencies to show up smarter and better and not waste their time, then share with the agencies who did not win why they didn’t win. What can the agencies learn from that? How can they get better, right? We all want to improve from this. So we know health systems are busy, but… You know, give us 15 minutes if we didn’t win and let us know how we can do better. That would be all agencies would greatly appreciate that.
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): I think that’s very important. It’s just professional, for one, to close that loop. And you want to keep those relationships, even though they may not have won the RFP. So I think it’s super important for everybody to follow up and do give a little bit of background and understanding why they maybe didn’t get the RFP to help them, as you said, Ben, for the next RFP.
But just again, it’s just a nice thing to do. It’s a professional thing to do to close that loop with those people who took the time to submit the RFP. I mean, it was a lot of their effort. So you should recognize that.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): I think that’s really important, Krista. It’s funny because it’s really common actually to not get a response we get an email reply and we say can we learn what we from it and we get no response like you’re kidding we spent 100 hours working on this so I totally agree I think an extra 15-minute investment is certainly a nice gesture to have.
Any final comments do you guys have I’d love to just wrap up here any last bits of words of advice and it’s okay to go back and stress things that you think are really really important.
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): Nothing else that I can think of. I’m sure, Ben, you have a wealth of information to share.
Ben Cash (Reason One): By the way, for those of you listening to the podcast, it is Friday about four o’clock. So thank you to Stewart and Krista. We’re juicing the last bit of brain cell in this conversation.
You all are awesome. I think, you know, I’m going to cheat a little bit, Stewart, because in the last part of that deck that we put together for the panel, we summarized a couple of things about, you know, what each side needs. And it was the idea was listen to one another’s needs when you show up for these RFPs that we have to struggle through. Agencies said that they need real budget guidance.bRealistic expectations given the inherent unknowns. More opportunity for dialogue prior to submission. Simplified proposal requirements. And clear selection criteria. How are we going to be judged? Where should we lean in?
Health systems said that they need clearer, more consistent proposal formats, right? You’ve got to read through that stack of them. Please make it easy for us, right? They needed stronger alignment of proposals with project scope and goals, right? So don’t tell us about all the awesome things you can do or how great you are. Tell us how you’re going to solve our problems. They also wanted better coordination between marketing, IT, and procurement teams.
Actually, one of the things, just a side note, At the end of that panel, we provided some supportive materials and we can provide those as part of this podcast as well, some templates and things that help speed up that process. One of them was a vision and goals exercise that is something you can go through with your own internal teams to get everybody aligned to better show up for this RFP. So we’ll share some of those things.
 And another thing was more standardized cost breakdowns for easier evaluation because, you know, you get a lot of different approaches and costs and if you can itemize those it’s a lot easier to make it apples to apples, so those are just a few of the things that health systems and agencies said they need.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Okay and then I would just add you know based on this conversation the thing that stood out to me the most was the communication and again when you have the opportunity to have a meeting or two—again, from an agency standpoint, if you’re looking for a good agency that’s busy, right, they really want to invest their time on RFPs that make sense.
And not every RFP, it’s just reality. Just like not every agency makes sense for the vendor or for the health system or health care client, not every um client makes sense for a given agency, and so the idea of having those thoughtful discussions up front if we all agree that we’re going to go to the proposal stage we’ll do that and to be able to present that live is night and day and I can tell you, you know, having taken inquiries—lately, it seems like daily, like a lot. We can tell pretty quickly which ones are a good fit or which ones aren’t.
And so I’ll tell people transparently, like, you know, there’s stuff we get every day, but this is perfect. Like, this isn’t our sweet spot. This is exactly what we live for and do every day. And there’s others, it’s like, you know, we can do this, but not really. Maybe here’s some other people you can have. You know, I just referred yesterday a client with a manufacturer who has lots of little practices they want to service and what they wanted to do. And it doesn’t fit us. So I referred it to somebody else.
I’m happy to do that. You know, it’s like the, because I know a million people. So it really is in everybody’s best interest to find a good partner and try to go through this process together.
Thank you guys for your time. Good job. I knew it would be fun.
Krista Robertson (Roper St. Francis Healthcare): Thank you for having us. Great.
Ben Cash (Reason One): Thanks for the time, Stewart.