Most RFP scoring frameworks are out of date. Built two or three years ago and barely revisited since, they’re now struggling to keep up with a market that has moved on fast. Our research among 153 senior procurement and workforce leaders shows just how sharply buyer priorities have shifted, and why it’s time to ask whether your evaluation criteria are still measuring what matters.
It sounds obvious, but AI and automation are no longer optional
AI and automation tops the list of capabilities rated "much more important" today, according to 42.76% of respondents. What makes this figure notable isn't just its size. AI also sits among the lowest-ranked capabilities for "less important" responses. Few things in this data move in one direction so decisively.
AI capability is now table stakes, not a differentiator. Buyers expect to see it tangibly, and they expect proof and practical applications rather than description and theory.
Skills-based hiring is reshaping the brief
Close behind, 41.45% of respondents rate skills-based hiring as much more important than it was three years ago. This tracks a broader shift in how organisations think about workforce planning, moving away from filling defined roles and towards mapping capability and adjacent skills across a workforce.
Suppliers still pitching role-based sourcing models as their core strength are increasingly out of step with what buyers are actually asking for.
Strategic partnership over transactional delivery
Workforce planning (37.50%) and workforce insights and analytics (35.81%) both rank highly too. Together, these figures point to something specific - buyers aren't just looking for a supplier who can fill vacancies. They want a partner who can help shape workforce strategy and provide the data to back it up.
That's a materially different relationship to the one many RFPs are still written for.
Where the RFP process falls short
The tension arises because buyers clearly want to assess AI and technology capability properly, evidenced by technology demonstrations ranking as one of the most trusted validation methods. However, 29% of respondents name evaluating technology as one of their biggest RFP challenges.
Buyers want to test this capability, but most RFPs still ask suppliers to describe it in writing. And written responses are, by a wide margin, the least trusted part of the whole process. Only 9.8% of respondents say they rely mainly on written responses to validate supplier capability, despite this being the section that takes suppliers and buyers the most time to complete.
AI claims are cheap to write. They're far harder to verify without seeing them in action. If your RFP scoring still weights a written AI or technology response heavily, you could well be measuring the wrong thing and putting much greater focus on practical demonstrations.
What's losing ground
At the other end of the list, scale and integrated MSP plus RPO offerings both sit at 27.63%, well below the top four capabilities. This is a meaningful signal, as for years, breadth of service and sheer scale were strong selling points in workforce solutions procurement. That's clearly now fading.
Buyers appear to be optimising for depth in the capabilities that matter most to them right now, rather than rewarding suppliers simply for doing more things across a wider footprint. A supplier with strong AI, skills-based hiring and analytics capability may now outperform a larger, broader competitor on paper, even if that competitor has historically been seen as the safer choice.
The practical fix
If your current scoring framework still leans on scale, breadth of service and written capability statements, it's likely rewarding exactly the things buyers are deprioritising, while failing to properly test the things they now care about most.
A more useful approach is to build capability-specific validation directly into the RFP process rather than leaving it to a written section. That could mean a live AI or platform demonstration, a walkthrough of workforce analytics dashboards using real data, or a working session with the team who would actually deliver skills-based hiring on your account.
This does two things. It gives suppliers a fairer chance to show genuine strength rather than polished prose. It also gives your evaluation panel something they can actually compare, rather than relying on subjective interpretation of a written claim.
The gap that's costing confidence
The capabilities that matter have moved faster than most RFP frameworks have. AI and automation, skills-based hiring, workforce planning and analytics are where buyer attention now sits. Scale and service breadth, once reliable differentiators, carry far less weight than they used to.
Closing that gap between what you're scoring and what you actually need starts with one honest question: When did you last rebuild your evaluation criteria from scratch, rather than adjusting the same framework you've used for years?
Download the full report to see what 153 senior procurement and workforce leaders say is changing in RFP decision-making, and how to build a scoring framework that reflects what buyers value now.
Ready to talk now? Get in touch with Guidant Global to discuss how we can help you build a workforce solution that keeps pace with what buyers value today:
