The Convention Industry Council has released a new APEX tool to assist planners with creating and managing RFPs. The new APEX RFP Workbook offers planners a way to keep the most common RFPs associated with a meeting, convention, exhibition or event in one convenient location.
Drawing from the full APEX RFP documents, the APEX RFP Workbook takes a streamlined spreadsheet-driven approach, removing as much unnecessary or duplicative information as possible, and providing simple, drop-down menus and auto-populating fields where possible.
“Our goals in creating the APEX RFP Workbook were to provide a simple resource that was built on ‘APEX DNA’ and focused on being accessible and easy to use and understand,” said MaryAnne Bobrow, Bobrow & Associates, chair of the APEX Standards Review Council (SRC), the volunteer body that created the tool. “The full APEX RFP documents are valuable resources to our industry and are enormously comprehensive blueprints. The Workbook translates those blueprints into a handy tool.”
The APEX RFP Workbook includes templates for single facility events; citywide events / destination; event technology/audio-visual; DMC & transportation services; and general service contractors.
“One of the benefits of moving to a spreadsheet format for the templates is that they can continue to adapt and improve over time to include new functions and to correct any problems,” said Doug McPhee, Experient Sales Network, who chaired the of the Standards Review Council when the project began. “The SRC Council anticipates that feedback from planners and suppliers alike will continually improve the workbook on an ongoing basis.”
The APEX RFP Workbook is available free of charge from the Convention Industry Council website:
http://www.conventionindustry.org/StandardsPractices/APEX/RFPWorkbook.aspx
