In this guide
Key Takeaways
- →Checklist RFPs get a yes to nearly everything. The format is the problem, not the vendors.
- →Replace “does it support” with “describe how,” and add scenarios the vendor has to walk through on your own matrix.
- →Scenario A, the priority that finished while its KPI stayed flat, tells you more about fit than the rest of the RFP combined.
- →Apply four vendor evaluation criteria to every written answer: specific, shown, current, unaided. Outcome lag, drill-down and cadence are must-pass.
- →Add a commercial section. Almost nobody in this market publishes a list price, so identically scoped quotes are the only way to compare.
- →Ask what happens if you add OKRs or a Balanced Scorecard next year. That answer moves the five-year number more than the license line does.
An RFP that asks “Does your tool support catchball?” will get a yes from every vendor. Ask them to describe what happens when a regional lead disagrees with a target and you’ll get answers you can actually compare.
Why checklist RFPs fail
Most software RFPs are built from a requirements spreadsheet: a long column of capabilities with a yes/no response beside each. For hoshin kanri, that format produces a predictable result. Every serious vendor answers yes to nearly everything, because the method’s vocabulary is shared and every tool can draw something that resembles each artifact.
The shortlist then gets decided by price and presentation, and the differences that matter, how the tool behaves when the plan meets reality, are discovered after the contract is signed.
The fix is to change the form of the question. Replace “does it support” with “describe how” and, wherever possible, with a scenario the vendor has to walk through.
Weak questions and their stronger versions
Lift the right-hand column straight into your software RFP template. Each stronger version asks a vendor to describe behavior rather than confirm that a feature exists, which is the whole difference between a response you can score and one you cannot.
| Area | Weak question | Stronger question |
|---|---|---|
| X-matrix | Does the tool provide an X-matrix? | Describe what a single correlation on the X-matrix stores. Can a user open it, and what do they see? |
| Correlations | Can correlations be weighted? | How does a user tell, from the matrix, which correlations are primary? How are grade changes recorded? |
| Progress | Does the tool track KPIs? | Where do priority and KPI progress values come from in production, and who enters them? |
| Outcome lag | Does the tool have dashboards? | A priority is complete and its correlated KPI hasn’t moved. Describe exactly where a reviewer would see that, without building a report. |
| Catchball | Does the tool support catchball? | A regional lead disputes a proposed target. Describe how they respond, who sees it, and where the exchange is kept after agreement. |
| Bowler | Does the tool include a bowler chart? | Show a bowler row with two consecutive red months. Where does the owner’s explanation and countermeasure appear? |
| Horizons | Does the tool support multi-year planning? | How is a three-year breakthrough objective linked to this year’s annual objectives? What happens to both at year end? |
| Cascade | Can the matrix be cascaded? | Describe the deepest cascade one of your customers runs today, and how a site objective connects to the group objective above it. |
| History | Does the tool keep an audit trail? | Show us what a given objective’s target, owner and status were three months ago, and who changed them. |
| Cadence | Does the tool send reminders? | Who maintains the monthly data in a typical customer, and how many hours a month does it take them? |
Use the stronger version for every requirement that matters.
Add three scenarios
Scenarios are the most revealing part of a hoshin RFP, because they can’t be answered with a feature name. Ask each shortlisted vendor to walk through these in a live session, using a version of your own matrix.
Scenario A: the finished priority
“Priority P3 reached 100% in July. The KPI it’s graded primary against has been flat since January. Walk us through what the September review sees, and how the team decides whether to retire P3.”
Scenario B: the disputed target
“Group proposes a 36% services share. The North America lead believes 30% is achievable without a new contract model. Show us how that negotiation happens in the tool and where the agreed reasoning lives in six months, when a new lead takes over the region.”
Scenario C: the new year
“It’s December. Show us how next year’s matrix starts, which parts carry over from this year, and how we’d see which of this year’s correlations turned out to be wrong.”
A vendor’s answer to scenario A tells you more about fit than the rest of the RFP combined.
Questions about adoption and effort
Hoshin software fails more often from neglect than from missing features. These questions get at the operating reality:
- What share of objectives in a typical customer have a check-in within their due window? How do you measure it?
- How long, in weeks, from contract to the first monthly review run from the tool, for a customer of our size?
- What does a customer’s program lead do each month in the tool that a priority owner doesn’t?
- What do you recommend we stop doing outside the tool once it’s live?
The last question is especially useful. A vendor that has thought about adoption will tell you to stop building the review deck in slides. One that hasn’t will tell you about export options.
Scoring the responses
Score written responses on whether they describe behavior in your terms, not on length. A good answer names who does what and where it appears. A weak one names a feature and links to a brochure.
- Specific. Does the answer say who does the action and where the result appears?
- Shown. Was the behavior demonstrated live on your data, not just described?
- Current. Is it available today, rather than planned?
- Unaided. Does it work without a custom report, a consultant or an administrator stepping in?
Treat the outcome-lag, drill-down and cadence questions as must-pass, consistent with the seven pass/fail tests for choosing hoshin kanri software. Everything else can be weighted.
Commercial questions the RFP usually misses
Most hoshin RFPs run out of energy before they reach the commercial section, which is where comparability is actually won or lost. Almost no vendor in this market publishes a list price; nearly all of them quote. That makes the wording of these software procurement questions the only thing standing between you and three quotes that cannot be compared with one another.
| Area | Weak question | Stronger question |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | What does it cost? | Price this exact deployment: our number of priority owners, KPI owners and read-only viewers, at our cascade depth. Itemize what changes if viewers double. |
| Seats | Is it priced per user? | Which roles consume a paid seat? Does someone who only reads the matrix need one? |
| What is included | Is support included? | Which of implementation, data migration, training, integrations and premium support sit inside the quoted figure, and which are quoted separately? |
| Implementation | How long is onboarding? | Quote implementation for our cascade depth as a fixed fee, and name the conditions that would push it above that figure. |
| Methodology scope | Do you support OKRs too? | If we add OKRs or a Balanced Scorecard next year, is that the same subscription or a new line item? |
| Renewal | What are the contract terms? | What is the uplift cap at renewal, and what happens to our price if our seat count falls? |
| Exit | Can we export our data? | Describe exactly what we receive on exit: matrix, graded correlations, check-in history and catchball threads, in what format. |
Send the commercial section to every vendor in the same shape. Quotes scoped differently are not comparable, and most first-round quotes are scoped differently.
The methodology-scope question is the one most often skipped and most often expensive. A program that adds OKRs beneath the annual matrix a year later can discover it has bought a second product, with a second implementation and a reconciliation job between them. In Profit.co, Hoshin Kanri sits inside the Essentials plan alongside OKRs & Goals, Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Roadmap, so that question has a one-word answer.
Two further notes on scope. Send the RFP to more than one market category, because the same capability is sold as hoshin kanri software, strategy deployment software and strategy execution software, and a shortlist drawn from one search term will miss vendors that pass every test. And ask for the five-year figure, not the first-year one: renewal uplift and seat growth move the total more than the opening license does. These seven rows belong in the same RFP template as the behavioral questions above, scored by the same vendor evaluation criteria.
Using this with Profit.co
We’re happy to be evaluated against every question here, including the scenarios on your own data. The hoshin kanri software overview shows how Profit.co handles correlations, outcome lag, catchball, the bowler chart and multi-year objectives, so you can see before the session what to probe.
Where the answers sit
| RFP area | What to look at in Profit.co |
|---|---|
| Correlations and outcome lag | The X-Matrix links vision, annual objectives, improvement priorities and KPIs in one view, with KPI Tracking monitoring every indicator in real time |
| Progress and cadence | Owners check in on their own rows through the same engine that runs Profit.co’s OKR and Balanced Scorecard programs |
| Bowler and countermeasures | The Bowler Chart tracks plan against actual each period with the owner’s latest comment |
| History | The OKR Audit Log records every change to objectives with timestamps, part of the platform’s complete audit history |
| Commercial scope | Hoshin Kanri, OKRs & Goals, Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Roadmap are in the Essentials plan, which carries a 30-day free trial; Enterprise is quoted for multi-entity deployments needing SSO, data residency and audit logs |
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Questions this article answers
Questions that ask what a correlation stores, where priority and KPI values come from, how a disputed target is negotiated and recorded, how multi-year and annual objectives link, how history is kept, and how many admin hours a typical customer spends each month.
Every serious vendor can answer yes to “does it support catchball” or “does it have an X-matrix”. Scenario questions force vendors to show behavior, which is where tools actually differ.
On whether each answer says who does what and where the result appears, whether it was shown live on your data, whether it’s available today, and whether it works without custom reports or administrator help.
Which roles consume a paid seat, what sits inside the quoted figure, implementation as a fixed fee, the renewal uplift cap, what you receive on exit, and whether adding OKRs or a Balanced Scorecard later is the same subscription or a new line item.
Scope every quote identically: the same owner and viewer counts, the same cascade depth, the same migration. Then ask for the five-year figure rather than the first-year one, because renewal uplift and seat growth move the total more than the opening license.
Send it to both. The same capability is sold as hoshin kanri software, strategy deployment software and strategy execution software, so a shortlist drawn from one search term misses vendors that would pass every test.
