A Salesforce RFP can produce a strong implementation plan and still leave the buyer with a delivery model that breaks at the first contested decision. The decisions that matter come before any supplier estimate: who decides, who must be consulted, who owns the platform after go-live, and what evidence changes a decision. Spread across a governance slide, a staffing appendix and one contract clause, they are easy to approve and hard to enforce. Treat them as part of the solution design.
Put decision rights in the RFP, not in the kickoff deck
Ask each bidder to describe decision rights at the points where a programme stalls or diverges. A generic RACI is not enough: it can name an accountable executive and still leave open whether that person can settle a conflict between a global data standard, a local commercial requirement and a supplier dependency.
Require a decision register from the start. Each entry names the decision, the owner, the contributors, the evidence required, the deadline, the escalation route and the cost of delay. The register turns governance into a working control, and it lets the sponsor tell a real dependency from a supplier preference.
Test it with scenarios. A business unit asks to change the shared Account model after build has started. An integration owner rejects an API contract proposed by the Salesforce team. A security control conflicts with a release date. A credible answer names who decides and on what evidence. “The steering committee will align” does not answer the question.
Decision rights also need a boundary. The implementation partner recommends a design and owns its delivery commitments. It does not become the final authority on the buyer’s data policy, target operating model or risk acceptance. If internal ownership is missing, the contract will not repair the gap; it will only record it.
The earlier the buyer knows what it wants to decide itself, the sharper the RFP. At Disneyland Paris in 2022, I audited the B2B processes and set a Salesforce target before the integrator was chosen, so partner selection started from a written scope instead of vendor-led discovery. A bidder who receives a written scope has to price it. A bidder who receives an open brief will write the scope for you.
Separate solution authority from delivery management
Many RFPs ask for a programme manager, a design lead and a delivery team without asking how those roles disagree.
The design authority owns the integrity of the design: data model boundaries, integration contracts, security constraints, non-functional requirements and exceptions to standards. Delivery management owns the plan, the dependencies, the forecast and the recovery of missed commitments. Business owners decide whether the outcome is still worth its cost and change effort.
The roles overlap without being interchangeable. A delivery lead can expose the impact of a late design decision, but should not quietly make that decision to protect a milestone. A design authority can explain why a local configuration puts a shared capability at risk, but should not set the business priority without the accountable business owner.
Require a named design authority on both sides. On the buyer’s side, that person needs access to the business sponsors and the mandate to reject a locally convenient design that damages a shared capability. On the supplier’s side, the named lead needs enough time in the staffing plan to govern the work, beyond an early workshop and a late escalation. Ask each bidder to show how that lead turns a design choice into a bounded decision: an owner, assumptions, acceptance criteria and a recorded outcome.
Make handover an acceptance criterion
A Salesforce programme does not end at deployment. The commercial model often assumes a handover, yet the RFP rarely says what the buyer must be able to run without the delivery team.
Set operating-model acceptance criteria next to the functional ones: an owned decision log, named owners for integrations and critical metadata, a release process, a support triage route, a backlog ownership model, and accessible records of material design choices. The point is to make ownership observable before the supplier’s role changes.
Ask bidders which responsibilities stay with them after go-live, which move to internal teams and which need a retained service, and what makes each transfer credible. A transition plan that lists meetings is weak. One that names the incoming owner, the decision they must take, the evidence they need and the date they take authority can be tested.
This matters most when the platform spans business units or delivery partners. Without a shared owner for cross-cutting concerns, each team optimises its own backlog and the data definitions drift apart. The note on the Salesforce Center of Excellence describes where those concerns can sit.
Score the commercial model against its control model
Day rates and velocity estimates matter, but they do not show how a supplier behaves when a decision changes the commercial plan.
Ask bidders which events change scope, which trigger a forecast revision, and who approves a trade-off between cost, date and design integrity. The answer should tie contract change control to the programme decision register. Otherwise the project runs on two versions of reality: the delivery plan and the commercial process.
Read the incentives as carefully as the estimate. A supplier paid only for utilisation may defer hard design work until it becomes an expensive exception. A supplier paid only for speed may ship a release that moves risk into the support team. Neither requires bad intent, only a contract that leaves quality and recovery outside the commercial conversation.
Run a short scenario review with each shortlisted bidder. Give every team the same case: an integration dependency is late, a sponsor asks for a new priority, and the original go-live date is still visible to leadership. Ask for the next two weeks of decisions, not a recovery framework. Compare the assumptions they challenge, the people they involve, the evidence they ask for and the commitments they refuse to make without approval.
Use the first month to test the promises
An RFP response is a set of hypotheses. Mobilisation should test them before design and build make reversal expensive.
Check that the named roles attend the forums they were proposed to lead, and that escalations in the decision register reach a decision before they turn into planning noise. Take one cross-team design decision through request, evidence, approval, record and communication. If the result depends on informal access to one supplier executive, the model is weaker than the bid suggested.
A small, real decision is enough to show whether the buyer’s authority, the supplier’s method and the commercial controls connect. If they do not, fix the operating model while the scope is still small.