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RFP Question Bank for AI Vendor Selection

RFP Question Bank for AI Vendor Selection

Using the Periodic Table of AI Framework

Introduction

This question bank is designed to help you create comprehensive Requests for Proposal (RFPs) or Requests for Information (RFIs) when evaluating AI technology vendors. The questions are organized by the seven framework dimensions, ensuring you gather all the information needed to make an informed decision.

How to Use This Document:

  1. Identify the component you are sourcing from the Periodic Table of AI
  2. Review its classification across all seven dimensions in the framework
  3. Select relevant questions from each dimension section below
  4. Customize the questions to your specific context and requirements
  5. Add the questions to your RFP or vendor evaluation process

Dimension 1: Build vs Buy vs Integrate

Framework Purpose: Understanding the vendor’s positioning and integration approach.

Questions for Vendors

  1. Product Architecture: Describe your product’s architecture. Is it a standalone solution, a platform, or a set of APIs designed for integration?

  2. Customization Capabilities: What aspects of your solution can be customized or configured to meet unique business requirements? What requires custom development?

  3. Open Source vs Proprietary: What components of your solution are based on open-source technologies? What is proprietary?

  4. Integration Points: Provide a detailed list of all integration points your solution offers (APIs, SDKs, webhooks, etc.). What protocols and standards do you support?

  5. Deployment Options: Can your solution be deployed on-premises, in our cloud environment, or only in your managed cloud? What are the trade-offs?

  6. Vendor Lock-In: What is your strategy for data portability and avoiding vendor lock-in? Can we export our data and models in standard formats?

  7. Build vs Buy Trade-offs: In your experience, what components do customers typically build themselves versus use your out-of-the-box capabilities?

Dimension 2: Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

Framework Purpose: Assessing product maturity, stability, and market validation.

Questions for Vendors

  1. Product History: How long has this product been available in the market? Describe the major version releases and evolution.

  2. Customer Base: How many customers are currently using this product in production? Provide a breakdown by industry and company size.

  3. Case Studies: Provide 3-5 detailed case studies of customers with similar use cases and scale to ours. Include metrics on ROI, time-to-value, and challenges overcome.

  4. Reference Customers: Provide contact information for at least three reference customers we can speak with directly.

  5. Product Roadmap: What are your planned feature releases for the next 12-24 months? How do you prioritize roadmap items?

  6. Beta vs GA Features: Which features in your product are Generally Available (GA) versus Beta or Preview? What is your policy on using Beta features in production?

  7. Known Limitations: What are the current known limitations or constraints of your product? What use cases is it not suitable for?

  8. Stability & Uptime: What has been your historical uptime over the past 12 months? Provide incident reports for any major outages.

  9. Version Support: What is your policy for supporting older versions? How often do you release breaking changes?

Dimension 3: Organizational Ownership

Framework Purpose: Understanding which internal teams will interact with the vendor solution.

Questions for Vendors

  1. Primary Users: Who are the primary users of your product? (e.g., data scientists, platform engineers, application developers, business analysts)

  2. Admin & Operations: What roles are required to administer, configure, and maintain your solution on an ongoing basis?

  3. Governance & Compliance: What roles need to be involved for governance, security, and compliance management?

  4. Training & Onboarding: Describe your training programs for different user personas. What certifications do you offer?

  5. Professional Services: What professional services do you offer to support implementation? Do you have implementation partners?

  6. Support Tiers: Describe your support model. Who can submit support tickets? What are the response time SLAs for different severity levels?

  7. Customer Success: Do you provide a dedicated Customer Success Manager? What does that engagement look like?

Dimension 4: Cost Structure

Framework Purpose: Understanding the financial model and total cost of ownership.

Questions for Vendors

  1. Pricing Model: Provide a detailed explanation of your pricing model. Is it based on usage, seats, data volume, API calls, or another metric?

  2. Pricing Tiers: What pricing tiers or packages do you offer? What features are included in each tier?

  3. Volume Discounts: Do you offer volume discounts or enterprise pricing? At what thresholds?

  4. Cost Predictability: How predictable are costs month-to-month? What factors could cause unexpected cost increases?

  5. Hidden Costs: Are there additional costs beyond the base license fee? (e.g., implementation, training, support, data egress, API calls)

  6. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Provide a detailed 3-year TCO estimate for a deployment of our scale, including all costs.

  7. Payment Terms: What are your standard payment terms? Do you offer annual vs. multi-year contracts? What are the discounts?

  8. Cost Optimization: What tools or features do you provide to help customers monitor and optimize their spending?

  9. CapEx vs OpEx: Can your solution be structured as a CapEx purchase (e.g., perpetual license) or is it OpEx only (subscription)?

Dimension 5: Human-in-the-Loop Intensity

Framework Purpose: Understanding the level of automation and operational burden.

Questions for Vendors

  1. Setup & Configuration: How long does initial setup and configuration typically take? What manual steps are required?

  2. Ongoing Maintenance: What ongoing maintenance tasks are required? How many hours per week should we expect to spend?

  3. Automation Capabilities: What processes does your solution automate end-to-end? Where is human intervention required?

  4. Monitoring & Alerts: What monitoring and alerting capabilities are built-in? What requires manual checking?

  5. Self-Service: Can end users self-serve, or do they need to go through administrators for common tasks?

  6. Workflow Integration: How does your solution integrate into existing workflows? Does it require users to switch contexts or tools?

  7. Human Review Loops: For AI/ML components, where are human review or approval steps required in the workflow?

  8. Scalability of Operations: As usage scales, does the operational burden scale linearly, or are there economies of scale?

Dimension 6: Criticality / Risk Level

Framework Purpose: Assessing reliability, resilience, and business continuity.

Questions for Vendors

  1. Service Level Agreement (SLA): What uptime SLA do you guarantee? What are the penalties for not meeting the SLA?

  2. Disaster Recovery: Describe your disaster recovery capabilities. What is your RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective)?

  3. Data Backup: How is customer data backed up? How frequently? Can we control backup frequency and retention?

  4. Redundancy & Failover: What redundancy and failover mechanisms are in place? Are they automatic?

  5. Security Incidents: Describe your incident response process. How quickly are customers notified of security incidents?

  6. Business Continuity: If your company were to be acquired or go out of business, what happens to our data and access to the service?

  7. Dependency Risks: What are your critical dependencies (e.g., cloud providers, third-party APIs)? What happens if those fail?

  8. Change Management: How do you communicate and manage changes to the service that could impact customers?

  9. Testing & QA: Describe your testing and quality assurance processes. How do you prevent bugs from reaching production?

Dimension 7: SFIA Activity Category

Framework Purpose: Aligning vendor capabilities with required skills and activities.

Questions for Vendors

  1. Skills Required: What skills and competencies are required for users to be successful with your product? Map these to SFIA skill codes if possible.

  2. Training Programs: Describe your training programs in detail. What learning paths do you offer for different roles?

  3. Documentation: Provide samples of your user documentation, API documentation, and admin guides. How is documentation maintained and updated?

  4. Community & Resources: Do you have a user community, forum, or knowledge base? How active is it?

  5. Consulting Services: Do you offer consulting services to help with specific activities like data engineering, model development, or governance implementation?

  6. Best Practices: What best practices, frameworks, or methodologies do you recommend for using your product effectively?

  7. Skill Development: How does your product help users develop their skills over time? Are there built-in learning features or guidance?

Additional Cross-Cutting Questions

Security & Compliance

  1. Certifications: What security certifications do you hold? (e.g., SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP)

  2. Data Privacy: How do you handle data privacy? Are you GDPR, CCPA compliant? Where is data stored geographically?

  3. Access Controls: Describe your access control and authentication mechanisms. Do you support SSO, MFA, RBAC?

  4. Audit Logs: What audit logging capabilities do you provide? Can logs be exported to our SIEM?

  5. Penetration Testing: When was your last third-party penetration test? Can you share the results?

  6. Data Encryption: How is data encrypted at rest and in transit? What encryption standards do you use?

Vendor Stability

  1. Company Financials: Provide information about your company’s financial health, funding, and growth trajectory.

  2. Leadership Team: Describe your leadership team’s experience and track record.

  3. Customer Retention: What is your customer retention rate? What is your Net Promoter Score (NPS)?

  4. Strategic Direction: What is your company’s long-term vision and strategy? How does this product fit into that?

Customization Checklist

Before sending your RFP, ensure you have:

  • Selected questions relevant to the specific component you are sourcing
  • Customized questions with your organization’s specific context and requirements
  • Added any industry-specific or regulatory questions
  • Included questions about integration with your existing tech stack
  • Specified the format and deadline for responses
  • Defined the evaluation criteria and process
  • Identified the decision-making team and timeline

Document Version: 1.0

Last Updated: November 2025

Framework Reference: Periodic Table of AI Multi-Dimensional Framework