RFPs Are Slow: The Hidden Cost for PBM Procurement

Request for Proposals (RFPs) are slow because they were built for a different kind of procurement environment. For health plans, coalitions, unions, specialty pharmacies, employer groups, and procurement teams (referred to as requestors moving forward), the problem is not simply that RFPs are slow. The bigger issue is that the process consumes expensive time before buyers have a clean way to compare available options.

For decades, the Request for Proposal has been the default process for evaluating complex vendors. It gives buyers a formal way to define requirements, ask questions, collect responses, compare vendors, and create a record of the selection process.

That formality has value. RFPs can be useful when the buyer needs a highly customized solution, when formal scoring is required, or when multiple stakeholders need to participate in a controlled evaluation.

But there is a hard truth requestors should be willing to say clearly:

The RFP was built for customization, not speed.

That distinction matters, especially in PBM procurement. Pharmacy Benefit Manager selection often involves pricing, rebates, networks, specialty pharmacy, mail service, clinical programs, implementation timelines, guarantees, audit rights, and reporting. These are serious topics. They deserve careful review.

But careful review does not always require a fully bespoke procurement process.

In many cases, RFPs are slow because they force every buyer and vendor to rebuild the same information exchange from the ground up.

The Resource Cost of RFPs Is Bigger Than the Calendar

When people say RFPs are slow, they often mean the process takes weeks or months. But the phrase RFPs are slow does not only describe the calendar. It also describes the amount of high-value labor required to move the process forward.

That is true, but the bigger issue is resource cost.

An RFP does not just consume calendar time. It consumes attention from procurement leaders, benefits teams, consultants, brokers, legal reviewers, finance teams, clinical stakeholders, operations leaders, and executives.

On the vendor side, the same problem exists. A Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) RFP response may require input from sales, proposal writers, pricing, account management, legal, network, clinical, compliance, operations, implementation, and leadership.

That is expensive labor. This is one of the main reasons RFPs are slow and costly: the process depends on repeated input from some of the most expensive people involved in the contract.

Every hour spent by the most experienced and costly people in the company affects the profitability of the contract. When senior leaders, legal teams, clinical experts, pricing teams, and operations specialists spend time on repetitive proposal work, that labor cost has to be absorbed somewhere.

Sometimes that effort is justified. Complex contracts need careful review.

But whenever possible, high-value labor should be used more efficiently. The most expensive people in the company should spend less time recreating standard information and more time evaluating real fit, managing risk, improving performance, and supporting better decisions.

For requestors, that resource burden matters too. Every hour spent managing avoidable process friction is an hour not spent evaluating strategy, member impact, cost drivers, or contract performance.

One public procurement review cited by NPPGov notes that even a non-complex solicitation can take more than 43 personnel hours, while complex bids can average more than 138 hours. The same overview points to one county example where the procurement process alone for awarding a five-year contract cost more than $86,000 in staff time. Those figures are not PBM-specific, but they illustrate the real issue: procurement processes can carry significant hidden labor costs before implementation ever begins.

The Old Goal Was a Better Custom Response

Traditional RFPs are designed to produce custom responses.

The buyer defines the need. Vendors respond to that need. The buyer compares the responses and selects a path forward.

That makes sense when the requirement is truly unique.

But many procurement questions repeat across PBM evaluations:

• What pricing models are available?
• How are rebates handled?
• What pharmacy networks are offered?
• What specialty pharmacy capabilities exist?
• What mail service expectations apply?
• What clinical programs are included?
• What reporting is available?
• What guarantees are offered?
• What implementation timeline is realistic?
• What audit rights are available?

These questions are important, but they are not always new.

When every buyer asks recurring questions in a different format, the market creates work without creating much new value. PBMs rewrite answers. Buyers normalize responses. Consultants rebuild comparison grids. Procurement teams manage version control. Legal teams revisit familiar terms.

This is why RFPs are slow even when everyone involved is competent. The slowdown is not usually caused by poor execution. It is caused by a process designed to produce custom answers over and over again. The process is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It is producing custom answers. The better question is whether every procurement event still needs that level of customization.

In PBM procurement, the statement RFPs are slow is not a criticism of the people doing the work. It is a recognition that the workflow itself asks buyers and vendors to spend too much time rebuilding information that could often be organized earlier.

PBM Procurement Has Become Too Important for Manual Comparison

PBM procurement is receiving more attention because pharmacy benefit decisions affect cost, access, transparency, and member experience.

The FTC has continued to examine PBM practices and prescription drug market dynamics, including pricing and pharmacy reimbursement concerns.

The Department of Labor has also proposed PBM fee disclosure requirements for employer-sponsored self-insured group health plans, with the stated goal of improving transparency into PBM contracts, arrangements, compensation, and fiduciary review.

For requestors, the message is clear: PBM evaluation needs to be more disciplined, not less.

But discipline should not be confused with paperwork.

A slow procurement process does not automatically create a better decision. A long RFP does not automatically create better comparison. More documents do not automatically create more clarity.

If PBM information arrives in inconsistent formats, buyers still have to translate it into something comparable.

That is the real problem. RFPs often create a document exchange first, then force comparison later.

Modern procurement should do the opposite.

It should organize the information first, then use that structure to support faster and better decision making.

Speed Matters When Customization Is Not the Main Requirement

Not every contract requires nuance. This is where RFPs are slow in the most frustrating way. The process can delay useful market visibility even when the buyer mainly needs to understand available options, compare broad fit, and decide whether a deeper conversation is worth pursuing.

Some PBM opportunities may require deep customization. Large employers, public sector entities, unions, coalitions, or complex plan sponsors may need a formal RFP with detailed requirements, stakeholder review, and custom contracting.

But other situations are different.

An employer group may need to understand available PBM options before committing to a full RFP. A procurement team may need to compare broad pricing and service models. A consultant may need to identify which PBMs are a likely fit. A benefits leader may need to evaluate whether the incumbent should be challenged.

In those situations, speed and clarity matter.

The buyer may not need a fully custom response. The buyer may need structured visibility into what is already available.

That is where the old process struggles.

The RFP asks the buyer to define the process before the buyer has clean visibility into the market. Then it asks vendors to create custom documents before anyone knows which options are genuinely strong fits.

That sequence is expensive.

PfRs Offer a Different Procurement Methodology

PfRs, or Proposals for Requestors, offer an alternative methodology for situations where speed and efficiency matter, and where full customization is not required. If RFPs are slow because they start with custom buyer requirements, PfRs are faster because they start with structured vendor availability.

A PfR is vendor initiated. It is created using structured templates and made available through a controlled online marketplace after access requirements are met. It is not public sales collateral. It is not tailored to one specific buyer. It represents a vendor’s available offering in a standardized format.

In PBM procurement, a well-constructed PfR can help qualified buyers review structured information about pricing approach, rebate structure, network model, specialty pharmacy capabilities, mail service expectations, reporting, implementation timeline, and quality guarantees.

This changes the starting point.

Instead of beginning with a blank RFP, the buyer begins with structured offerings. Instead of forcing vendors to recreate common information every time, PBMs can present available offerings in a more consistent way. Instead of waiting until the end of an RFP process to compare responses, buyers can compare key fields earlier.

Negotiation, legal review, consultant involvement, and custom follow-up may still be needed.

But a well-constructed PfR can minimize how much custom work is required before a serious conversation begins. When the core offering information is already organized, access-controlled, and presented in a consistent format, buyers and vendors can spend less time recreating standard documentation and more time focusing on the specific issues that actually require judgment.

That is another way PfRs lower cost and increase speed.

They do not make procurement less serious. They make the early stages of procurement more efficient.

AI Can Help, But Only When the Process Is Structured

AI has a role to play in modern procurement, but it should be framed realistically.

AI works best as a companion to procurement judgment, fiduciary responsibility, legal review, consultant expertise, and executive decision making.

When AI is paired with structured data and comparison tools, it can help decision makers move faster and with more confidence. It can support human review by summarizing differences, flagging missing information, organizing comparison points, identifying possible fit, and surfacing questions that deserve deeper analysis.

The key phrase is structured data.

If the input is a stack of inconsistent RFP responses, AI can summarize. But if the input is standardized PBM offering data, AI can support comparison more effectively.

That is why the future is not simply “AI for RFPs.”

The stronger future is structured procurement data, comparison dashboards, and AI-assisted review layered on top of consistent information.

The Goal Is Not to Make RFPs Faster

Many procurement teams recognize that RFPs are slow and try to improve them by making the existing process faster.

That can help at the margins. Software can make it easier to manage content libraries, reuse approved language, organize attachments, assign reviewers, track deadlines, and reduce some of the manual effort involved in producing a response.

Some teams are also experimenting with AI to reduce drafting time, summarize requirements, and lower the labor cost of repetitive proposal work. That may reduce some effort, but it does not change the deeper reason RFPs are slow. The buyer still starts with a custom request, the vendor still creates a custom response, and the comparison still happens after the documents are returned.

Those improvements are useful, but they do not fundamentally change the procurement model.

If the process still begins with a buyer-created document, continues through custom vendor responses, and ends with manual comparison across inconsistent formats, then the industry is mostly speeding up an old workflow.

For some categories, that may be enough.

For PBM procurement, where comparison is already difficult and transparency expectations are increasing, the more important question is whether the old workflow should remain the default.

The market does not only need faster RFPs.

It needs alternatives that are built for structured discovery, controlled access, and comparison from the beginning.

Procurement Workflows Need to Catch Up

RFPs are slow because they were built for customization. That is not a failure. It is a design choice. The problem is not admitting that RFPs are slow. The problem is pretending that every procurement situation still requires the same custom workflow.

The problem is using that design for every situation.

Requestors now have access to technology that can support a better path: searchable marketplaces, structured templates, comparison dashboards, controlled access, and AI-assisted review.

The goal is not to make procurement casual. The goal is to use the right methodology for the right situation.

When full customization is required, RFPs still have a place.

When the buyer needs speed, clarity, and structured comparison, PfRs offer a more efficient starting point.

PBM procurement is too important to be trapped in a process simply because that is how it has always been done.

It is time to stop asking only how to make the old process faster.

It is time to ask which parts of the old process no longer need to exist.