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In the age of APPs, do we need RfPs anymore?

Martin Lewis, the UK’s budgeting and money-saving guru, who has 600,000 Twitter followers and 16 million visits to his website/month believes that if you:

  1. are you skint then the three questions you should ask yourself before you buy anything, are:
    1. Do I need it? If you don’t need it, don’t buy it.
    2. Can I afford it? If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. And
    3. Have I checked whether it’s available cheaper anywhere else? If you haven’t checked, check.”
  2. are not skint, the three questions you need to ask yourself, are:
    1. Will I use it? If you won’t use it, don’t buy it.
    2. Is it worth it? This is a really difficult one. So while you might use an expensive pair of shoes, if you’d only use them once or twice, think about the cost per wear. Would you not be better off buying something that’s cheaper than you might wear more often, or even cheaper than you only wear once or twice? And
    3. Have I checked whether it’s available cheaper elsewhere? And if you haven’t checked, check.”

These questions show the fundamental reasoning that is part of most purchases, not just buying clothes.

Corporate APP market-places flourish

Surecomp®, a leading provider of global trade finance solutions for banks and corporates, this week announced the addition of another new fintech partner to its Marketplace platform*. Through open API connectivity, customers can now access Windward which is a leading fintech provider of maritime predictive intelligence for trade, finance and compliance.

Windward provides Know Your Vessel (KYV) and sanction screening to understand which entities are safe for business. It also provides advanced artificial intelligence combined with scientific data to predict behaviour patterns and trends, and risk mitigation and reporting for compliance.

“Risk-based compliance is of ever-increasing importance in the financial sector, requiring the industry to know everyone involved in a transaction that may trigger sanctions. Therefore, implementing new digital solutions is key,” explains Issey Ende, VP Sales, Windward. “The integration of Windward predictive intelligence into Surecomp’s fintech Marketplace provides customers with the leading technological AI-driven solution to improve business operations, mitigate risk and employ forward-thinking business practices.” 

Role of digital marketplaces

Developed with the simple aim of bringing together the industry’s best-of-breed solutions for a holistic digital trade finance experience, Surecomp Marketplace. In this case customers can benefit from Windward to significantly enhance their capabilities with regards to mitigating risk whilst enhancing operational performance for transaction screening, investigating and auditing, relating to the 90% of global trade which touches the ocean.
“Our Marketplace community is growing from strength to strength,” states Tsafrir Attar, Surecomp’s VP of Digitization. “We are so excited to announce the addition of Windward, which is truly next generation maritime technology that adds critical value and should be accessible to everyone in the world of global trade.” 

Are RfPs needed any more?

Do digital marketplaces like Surecomp’s remove the need for detailed RFPs because it is so easy to understand what applications like Windward do and how they deliver it. Also implementation, in the new API age, is now far less costly and takes so little time compared to before. Indeed, companies are now able to try the solutions live at very low cost, running them in parallel with their live system.

So maybe, the basic questions in choosing new system solutions are:

1.     Do we need it?

2.     Have you proved it with a pilot?

3.     What did other departments/people think of the new service that they have actually used?

4.     How much will it cost to run and maintain?

5.     When do we go live?

Is the era of three (+) months to develop an RFP coming to an end? Is a major source of corporate treasury consultants’ revenue finished?

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* Currently there are 27 APPs on the Surecomp® Marketplace


CTMfile take: Fintech has not just changed the way system options are made available to companies via marketplaces. It is also changed how corporates buy their system solutions, e.g. the changing role of the RfP, AND how they develop new solutions.

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Comments

By Jack Large on 4th Dec 2020:

I wrote this post to generate some reaction. Overall I feel that RfPs have a declining role as APPs will make purchases so low that many will not need an RFP. But for the more complex projects and problems, an RFP will still be needed.
Regards, Jack

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