How to Create an Intranet RFP: Step-by-Step Guide

An intranet RFP is not paperwork for procurement’s sake. It is the document that turns scattered opinions, vague intranet requests for “something modern,” and competing stakeholder agendas into a decision the business can stand behind.

When it is done well, it becomes a shared source of truth that keeps the specific project collaboration stable when pressure arrives, which it always does.

If you are leading internal comms, HR, or IT, your real job is risk reduction. You need to reduce vendor ambiguity, prevent scope creep, and surface adoption risks before you sign a contract. The goal is not simply to buy a platform. The goal is to launch an intranet people actually use, because usage is where ROI lives.

This guide walks you step by step through building an intranet software RFP that potential vendors can answer clearly, and that your team can score objectively. You can keep it lightweight for an early vendor shortlist, or expand it for formal procurement without changing the core structure or intranet requests.

What is an intranet RFP?

An intranet RFP (Request for Proposal) is a structured document that defines your organization’s intranet needs analysis process, your functional constraints, and desired evaluation method, so potential vendors can propose the right intranet solution, implementation time and approach, and pricing structure.

Unlike a generic intranet requirements list, a strong intranet RFP includes context about your engaged workforce, your use cases, and your current pain points. The proposal also captures your non-negotiables, such as security, identity, and integrations, and explains how you will evaluate responses so potential vendors can tailor proposals to what actually matters in key areas.

Just as importantly, it forces internal clarity. It makes ownership visible, pushes governance decisions earlier, and defines what adoption success looks like after launch, not just what the homepage looks like on demo day.

Why an intranet RFP matters

The biggest intranet failure mode is rarely “the tool cannot do X.” The most common failure is “employees did not use it,” because governance, content, and change management were fuzzy from day one. An intranet solution can be powerful and still become a ghost town if the organization never decides who owns content, how it stays fresh, and how employees will build the habit of visiting it. The right intranet strategy prevents this from happening.

A strong RFP request prevents three common problems that show up in almost every new intranet replacement project. Your internal decision-making team should keep the following in mind in order to make informed decisions:

• Buying a platform, not an intranet solution. Potential vendors sell features, but you need outcomes like faster access control for policies, fewer repetitive HR questions, less reliance on email, and better reach to frontline teams and remote employees. A well-crafted RFP should keep the conversation rooted in business impact.

• Under scoping implementation. Content migration, permissions, integrations, and identity are where timelines slip. An RFP that forces different vendors to “show the work” will protect your schedule and your credibility. The new intranet software implementation process needs to be planned and outlined in advance as part of the project.

• Weak comparability. If every vendor answers differently, you will not be able to score fairly. A structured RFP process creates consistent inputs, which makes the decision rational instead of political.

How to create an Intranet RFP: Step by step

Think of your new intranet software RFP like a briefing for a high-stakes launch. It should be specific enough to constrain the intranet solution, but open enough to let the right vendors propose better ways to meet your project goals and intranet strategy. If it is too vague, you will get marketing responses aimed at the public sector. If it is too prescriptive, you might accidentally design yourself into the wrong tool.

Use the RFP process steps below as your build sequence, and make sure your internal decision-making team takes them into consideration when vendors respond. By the end, you will have a vendor-ready RFP that you can also reuse internally as a project charter and alignment tool.

1. Define the purpose and success criteria

If you cannot define your intranet’s success in measurable terms, you will select based on UI preferences, loudest voice opinions, and the emotional high of a slick demo. The best RFP projects start by describing what the business needs to be true after launch, and how you will know you achieved it.

Start with a small set of business goals that leadership cares about. For example, you may want to reduce “where do I find” tickets to HR and IT, improve leadership message reach, speed up onboarding, or unify tools so employees stop hunting across drives, chat threads, and email. The right solution will offer a better idea of how to communicate and access information.

Then translate those goals into employee outcomes that describe real behavior. A useful outcome statement is specific enough to test, such as: “Frontline staff, remote workers, and deskless employees can access critical updates on mobile within two minutes,” or “New hires can find the correct policy without asking a project manager.” These outcomes pull your RFP process away from abstract features and toward actual work patterns.

Finally, define adoption and governance KPIs early so the new intranet is built for sustained use. Intranet adoption metrics might include active users, content reach, search functionality success rate, time to find key documents, and engagement actions like comments or reactions. Governance metrics might include stale page rate, ownership coverage, and publishing SLAs, because content rot is one of the fastest ways to lose trust in the platform.

2. Document your current state pain points and constraints

Vendors cannot propose a credible plan if they do not understand what is broken today, and what constraints they must respect. This section is also useful internally, because it stops stakeholders from romanticizing the current state or minimizing complexity as part of your project.

Describe your existing systems and tool ecosystem in plain language. That might include a legacy intranet, SharePoint, Google Drive, Teams or Slack, email newsletters, sample documents, HRIS, ITSM, and any departmental portals. Do not worry about being exhaustive. Focus on what employees actually use to get work done and to find information.

Then document what is not working. Common issues include weak search, outdated content, approvals that take too long, poor mobile access, and siloed internal communications where different teams publish in different places with different standards. The goal is to explain the friction employees feel, because that is what the intranet must remove.

Close the section with constraints and non-negotiables for your intranet strategy. These typically include security model, data residency, SSO requirements, legal and compliance needs, and your internal development capacity. If something is a deal breaker, say it explicitly. Being direct here saves everyone time.

3. Define your users, audiences, and access needs

Your user model determines everything, including information architecture, permissions, mobile requirements, technical issues, and content workflows. If you get this wrong, you will either overbuild for edge cases or underbuild for the majority experience.

Start your intranet requests by describing your employee populations, not just your headcount. Many organizations include desk-based employees, frontline workers, contractors, retail teams, manufacturing sites, and regional offices with different connectivity realities. It matters whether the typical employee has a laptop and corporate email, or a shared device and limited time between tasks.

Next, define a small set of personas that map to intranet behavior. A new hire, a manager, an HR business partner, IT support, a comms publisher, and a local editor each need different access, workflows, and content surfaces. These personas also help vendors show you how targeting and personalization work in real life, not just in theory.

Finally, describe access patterns and authentication expectations. If you are mobile first, say so. If you have shared devices, offline project needs, or multilingual requirements, name them. For authentication, include SSO, MFA, guest access rules if applicable, and lifecycle management for joiners, movers, and leavers. This is not just an IT detail. It is a major adoption lever because every extra step in the login reduces usage.

4. Write intranet requirements in a clean, scorable structure

The easiest way to get comparable proposals is to group requirements and force consistent answers for a clear understanding. When requirements are scattered, vendors choose what to respond to. When requirements are structured, vendors reveal where they truly fit and where they do not.

Organize your requirements into categories and make each category scorable. You can also label each item as “must have,” “should have,” or “nice to have” to avoid treating every comprehensive request as equally important.

• Communication and publishing

  Your intranet strategy should support modern publishing workflows, including scheduling, approvals, and targeting by audience so employees receive relevant news instead of a firehose. It should also support multi-channel delivery so the same update can live on the intranet, reach mobile users, and be summarized in email digests or newsletters when needed. Finally, it should support critical communication patterns, such as executive announcements, site-level alerts, and urgent banners that are hard to miss.

• Content management and search

  Content should be structured, not improvised. Look for metadata, tagging, content types, free templates, and versioning so the system can scale without becoming messy. Search should be strong enough to act like an internal “answer engine,” with relevance tuning, filters, and best bets for key policies. You should also include content lifecycle expectations such as review dates, ownership fields, and archiving rules in your intranet strategy, because freshness is a trust signal for employees.

• Employee experience and engagement

  A modern intranet should feel personal, not generic. Requirements in this section should cover personalization by role and location, and multilingual ongoing support if you operate across regions. Employee engagement features such as comments, reactions, and communities can turn communication into conversation, which is often the difference between passive readership and real adoption. If culture building is a goal, you can include recognition moments that reinforce the habit of opening the intranet regularly.

• Integrations and digital workplace

  Your intranet is rarely a standalone destination. It is a navigation layer and an experience layer that should connect to the tools employees already rely on through integrations. Include requirements for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, HRIS, ITSM, LMS, and document repositories. Also define your expectations for embedded apps, links, and employee directory experiences so employees can move from information to action without friction.

• Security, compliance, and administration

  This category should cover identity and access management, including SSO or SAML, role-based permissions, audit logs, and admin roles. You should also document expectations for data residency, retention, and compliance frameworks relevant to your organization, such as GDPR or SOC 2. Strong security requirements do not slow a project down. They prevent rework and protect your rollout timeline.

• Analytics and measurement

  Intranet analytics should answer practical questions, not just report page views. Your requirements should include reach and engagement reporting for communication teams, search analytics that show failed searches and content gaps, and adoption dashboards segmented by audience so you can see where frontline and non-frontline usage diverges. Measurement is how you prove impact and continuously improve after launch.

Practical note: If reaching frontline employees is part of your intranet goal, write explicit requirements for mobile and multi-channel delivery, and then test that experience during evaluation. Tools can look great on desktop and still fail where adoption matters most, which is the reality of a distributed workforce. Sociabble’s modern intranet and multi-channel communication capabilities are designed for “desk and frontline” reach, so an RFP should evaluate the actual end-to-end experience, including targeting, mobile consumption, and measurable reach, not just the homepage layout.

5. Add real-world use cases vendors must demonstrate

Use cases stop vendors from answering abstractly when it comes to intranet strategy. They also reveal where governance and information architecture will break in real life. Most importantly, use cases turn your demo process into something testable, because every vendor is showing the same workflows.

Choose scenarios that reflect your highest-stakes communication and your highest-frequency project needs. A crisis update for one region is a strong test because it requires targeting, translation, mobile delivery, and measurement. A “new hire finds the correct expense policy in under 60 seconds” scenario tests search relevance, information architecture, and content quality. HR publishing a benefits update with approvals, then scheduling an email digest tests workflow maturity and cross-channel communication. IT posting a service interruption banner that links to the ticketing portal tests urgency patterns and employee action.

When you write these scenarios, include what “good” looks like when it comes to how your intranet serves you. A well-crafted request will be specific on these points. For example, define the target audience, the required approval path, the delivery channels, single sign-on expectations, and the metrics you want to see afterward as part of your organization’s goals. That way, vendors cannot claim success without demonstrating it.

6. Specify implementation, migration, and change management expectations

Many intranet projects fail in the messy middle. Content migration expands, permissions get complicated, integrations take longer than expected, and adoption is treated as a launch email instead of a plan. Your RFP process should force detail here, because this is where the true cost and risk live.

Start by defining the migration scope at a high level. Clarify what content moves, what gets archived, and who owns cleanup. Many teams discover too late that they are migrating years of outdated pages that nobody trusts. A good vendor will help you reduce, not just transfer.

Ask for an implementation plan with phases, dependencies, milestones, and a clear RACI that distinguishes vendor responsibilities from client responsibilities. Also require a training plan that covers admins, publishers, local editors, and end users. Training is not a one-time event. It is how you create confidence and reduce support burden.

Finally, ask for an adoption plan that includes a launch campaign, manager toolkits, and a content calendar for the first 90 days. The first three months decide whether the intranet becomes a habit or an afterthought. Include a support model too, including SLAs, customer success structure, escalation paths, and release cadence, because year two operations matter as much as launch.

7. Build a scoring model

If you do not define scoring, your selection will drift into opinions and demo theatrics. A scoring model keeps the process fair, makes stakeholder input structured, and gives procurement a defensible rationale.

Use weighted criteria aligned to your priorities. A common model includes your particular product fit, implementation approach, security and compliance, user experience with mobile and frontline considerations, analytics and measurement, and commercials and contract flexibility. The exact weights should reflect your reality. For a frontline heavy organization, mobile reach might weigh as much as core product fit.

Define a simple scoring scale, such as 0 to 3 or 1 to 5, and write what each score means. For example, “meets,” “partially meets,” and “does not meet” are often clearer than nuanced scoring language. Then require proof for high-value requirements, including screenshots, customer examples, or a guided demo mapped directly to your use cases. Proof-based scoring reduces the risk of buying promises.

8. Ask the questions vendors rarely want to answer

Some vendor questions sound uncomfortable, but they reveal risk, additional costs, and long-term operability. If you skip them, you will pay later through change orders, add-ons, or disappointment after launch.

Ask what typically causes intranet project timelines to slip in projects like yours. A strong vendor will answer honestly and describe mitigations. Ask which features require paid add-ons, professional services, or third-party tools, because hidden costs often appear in analytics, integrations, or advanced targeting. Ask how content governance works at scale across multiple publishers and local markets, because your intranet will likely expand beyond the original core team.

Also ask which analytics are included out of the box versus at extra cost, and what year two looks like. Year two is where many organizations realize the platform is either easy to operate or quietly burdensome. The goal is to understand continuous improvement, roadmap influence, and expected admin workload.

9. Define RFP logistics: timeline, format, and evaluation process

A clear process improves response quality and reduces vendor confusion. It also signals that your organization is serious, prepared, and respectful of everyone’s time.

Include key dates such as intent to respond, Q and A deadline, proposal submission date, demo windows, and finalist selection. Then specify response format, including page limits and required tables. If possible, require a requirement-by-requirement response grid so you can score without interpretation.

Finally, define who evaluates what. IT should assess identity, security, and integrations. Comms should assess publishing, targeting, and campaign workflows. HR should assess employee journeys such as onboarding and policy discovery. Also include demo instructions that require vendors to walk through your use cases rather than a default deck. This single detail can dramatically improve decision quality.

Intranet RFP template

Use the structure below as your backbone. You can keep it lean for early-stage selection, or expand it for formal procurement without changing the logic.

1. Executive summary: Describe goals, why now, and what success looks like in practical terms.
2. Organization context: Summarize size, locations, frontline ratio, different languages, and key systems.
3. Current state: Outline existing tools, pain points, and constraints that shape the project.
4. Scope: Clarify what is in scope, what is out of scope, and what assumptions vendors should use.
5. Requirements: Present grouped, scorable requirements with priority labels.
6. Use cases to demonstrate: Provide three to six scenarios vendors must show end-to-end.
7. Implementation and change management: Request detailed plans for migration, training, launch, and adoption.
8. Security and compliance: Include identity, permissions, auditing, data handling, and compliance expectations.
9. Analytics and reporting: Define what must be measurable, and how reporting should be segmented.
10. Commercial response: Ask for pricing model, services, SLAs, and contract terms in a comparable format.
11. Evaluation criteria: Publish scoring weights, scale definitions, and proof requirements.
12. Submission instructions: Provide response format, deadlines, contacts, and Q and A process.

Conclusion

A strong intranet RFP is not about writing the longest document. It is about writing the clearest one, backed up by market research, so vendors can propose accurately and your stakeholders can decide confidently. Clarity is what protects your timeline, your budget, your internal communications, and your credibility.

If you take nothing else from this guide, take this: define success first, force real use cases, and score responses with a model your CFO would respect. Then insist on demos that follow your scenarios, not a generic product tour. That is how you pick a platform employees will actually use.

At Sociabble, we’ve already partnered with global leaders like Coca-Cola CCEP, Primark, and AXA to modernize their internal communication and intranet solutions. If you are evaluating modern intranet options and want to see what a mobile-first, multi-channel approach looks like in practice, book a demo to explore Sociabble with your use cases.

Intranet RFP FAQs

When it comes to creating an intranet RFP, common questions arise about structure, requirements, and evaluation. Here are clear answers to the ones we hear most often.

What should an intranet RFP include?

An intranet RFP should include goals and success criteria, user audiences and access needs, grouped requirements covering content, search, mobile, security, integrations, and analytics, plus implementation and change management expectations. It should also include pricing requirements and a scoring model so proposals are comparable.

How long should an intranet RFP be?

Your RFP should be long enough to remove ambiguity and short enough to stay readable. For many teams, eight to fifteen pages plus a requirements matrix is sufficient, especially if you include three to six concrete use cases that vendors must demonstrate.

Who should contribute to an intranet RFP?

Internal Comms, IT, HR, and Security or Compliance should contribute, along with a few business representatives who reflect both frontline and corporate realities. Procurement should be involved early to shape process and contract requirements, but the business teams should own the outcomes and adoption criteria.

How do you evaluate intranet vendors fairly?

Fair evaluation comes from structure. Use weighted scoring, require requirement by requirement responses, and run demos against your real use cases. Avoid selecting based on UI alone, and require proof for high value requirements so the process stays evidence based.

What are the biggest risks an intranet RFP should address?

The biggest risks of any intranet project are low adoption, weak governance, content migration complexity, security or compliance gaps, unclear ownership, and hidden costs for integrations, analytics, or professional services. A good RFP surfaces these risks early, when they are still inexpensive to fix.