Request for proposal for services as the food and agriculture research provider 2023

The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) aims to drive the private sector’s engagement in the SDGs through its benchmarks, envisioning a future where companies, investors, governments, civil society and individuals can quickly and easily compare businesses and motivate a ‘race to the top’. WBA is a global non-profit organisation with offices in London and Amsterdam and colleagues all over the world.

This Request for Proposal (RFP) sets out a draft scope of work for research provider support required to deliver the WBA benchmarks related to the food and agriculture sector, defined as 350 keystone food and agriculture companies. The respective WBA benchmarks are the Food and Agriculture Benchmark and the Nature Benchmark. The RFP is provided to enable interested parties (‘you’) to develop initial cost estimates and options to deliver the scope and as such should not be viewed as any form of agreement between you and WBA.

The research provider is not expected to create or revise a methodology, but to assess companies using the Food and Agriculture and Nature methodology. The key deliverables will be 356 draft company research profiles that WBA’s own core team of staff will finalise following (WBA-led) engagement with benchmarked companies.

Expectations of the proposal

We expect that your proposal will, first and foremost, include an estimate of the personnel and financial resources required to produce the expected deliverables listed herein. Furthermore, WBA anticipates that you will be able to demonstrate how you will deliver in three key areas:

• Research process and quality: interpreting large volumes of written data and scoring companies consistently against our methodology.
• Food and agriculture sector familiarity: depth of and proven knowledge regarding environmental, biodiversity, nutrition and social sustainability issues and business.
• Research intensity: being able to handle in-depth research of around 350 companies within condensed timeframes.

Moreover, WBA would like to see a staffing plan including how changes in staff will be handled throughout the project. We are interested in your approach to retaining people, supported with 2020 and 2021 (up to now) analyst retention rates.

WBA expects that proposals will detail the tasks, processes, time and costs involved, including day-rates for staff of various seniorities, costs for using any proprietary software/ databases and an eventual ‘cost-per-researched-company’. Responses to this RFP should be sent to s.posa@worldbenchmarkingalliance.org by 7 October 2022. Requests for extensions and clarifications should be sent to the same address. Project kick-off is anticipated to take place in December 2022. The tendering process will be conducted in line with the WBA Procurement Policy 2018-2022.

Read full proposal

Find here also an overview of the research and WBA’s procurement policy.