Global mobility RFP and RFI questions

A mobility RFP should do more than compare rates and feature lists. It should reveal how each supplier will operate, make decisions, protect the employee experience, integrate with the client’s ecosystem, manage risk, and improve over time.

Before writing the RFP

Clarify why the organization is going to market. Common drivers include service inconsistency, cost pressure, geographic expansion, technology limitations, a contract event, policy redesign, or a need to consolidate suppliers. Then define the future-state outcomes and the non-negotiable requirements.

• Document current volume, geography, policy types, and service mix.
• Identify pain points using data, case reviews, stakeholder interviews, and employee feedback.
• Separate mandatory requirements from preferences.
• Agree on evaluation criteria, scoring weights, decision rights, and conflict rules before proposals arrive.

Operating model and account leadership

• Describe the proposed global, regional, and local operating model.
• Who owns the client relationship, daily delivery, escalations, and continuous improvement?
• Which services are delivered directly, through affiliates, or through subcontractors?
• How will the supplier maintain consistency across regions while respecting local requirements?
• Provide the proposed team structure, location, tenure, caseload assumptions, and succession plan.
• Describe how complex cases are escalated and resolved.

Service delivery and employee experience

• Walk through the employee journey from authorization through post-move support.
• How are expectations established with employees, managers, HR, and recruiters?
• What service standards are standard, configurable, and contractually committed?
• How is service quality measured beyond satisfaction surveys?
• Provide examples of closed-loop service recovery and root-cause correction.
• How are executive, high-risk, or sensitive moves handled?

Technology, data, AI, and integrations

• Identify the authoritative system for case, policy, cost, and compliance data.
• Describe standard integrations with HRIS, payroll, tax, immigration, travel, and reporting systems.
• What APIs, file transfers, event triggers, and validation controls are available?
• Who owns data definitions, mapping, exception management, and reconciliation?
• Which AI capabilities are in production, and where is human review required?
• How are privacy, security, access, retention, model risk, and auditability managed?
• Provide the product roadmap and explain how clients influence prioritization.

Compliance, privacy, security, and continuity

• Explain controls for immigration, tax, payroll, employment, social security, and business travel obligations.
• Describe information-security certifications, incident response, data residency, and subcontractor controls.
• How does the supplier monitor regulatory changes and communicate required action?
• Provide business-continuity and disaster-recovery standards, testing frequency, and recovery objectives.
• Describe audit support and documentation retention.

Implementation and change management

• Provide a detailed implementation methodology, timeline, dependencies, and resource assumptions.
• Who has decision authority when design issues or data gaps arise?
• How will open cases, historical data, contracts, and employee communications transition?
• Describe testing, cutover, hypercare, training, and adoption measurement.
• Provide examples of implementations of similar scope and complexity, including lessons learned.

Pricing and commercial structure

• Separate professional fees, transaction fees, pass-through costs, technology charges, and third-party markups.
• Identify minimums, volume assumptions, indexing, out-of-scope fees, and termination costs.
• Explain referral revenue, rebates, commissions, revenue sharing, or other economic relationships.
• Provide sample invoices and explain audit and reconciliation controls.
• Describe service credits, performance incentives, and pricing governance.

Governance, reporting, and continuous improvement

• What KPIs and SLAs will be reported, at what cadence, and with what data lineage?
• How will exceptions, complaints, costs, risk, and regional performance be reviewed?
• Describe QBR and executive-governance structures.
• How are action items assigned, tracked, and closed?
• Provide examples where insight led to measurable policy, service, cost, or experience improvement.

How to score responses

A practical scorecard often includes strategic fit, operating model, service delivery, geographic capability, technology and data, compliance and security, implementation, commercial value, governance, references, and cultural fit. Weight criteria before receiving proposals and require evaluators to record evidence for material scores.

Common RFP pitfalls

• Starting with a legacy questionnaire instead of current business requirements.
• Allowing bidders to define the comparison through inconsistent assumptions.
• Overweighting price while underweighting implementation and operating risk.
• Scoring marketing claims without evidence.
• Inviting too many bidders or creating an unnecessarily long process.
• Failing to resolve internal stakeholder disagreement before finalist presentations.
• Selecting a supplier without a realistic transition and governance plan.