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RFP Package · Enterprise Applications

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) RFP questions and template

125 questions, 10 demo scenarios and a five-vendor scorecard for choosing Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software, in one Excel workbook.

Buy the workbook, from $499Read sample questions

What this package is for

Use it to run a Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software selection, from the first long list to the final scorecard.

What the category covers. 124 questions for buyers of enterprise content management, covering records retention and disposition, legal hold, capture, workflow, the repository, search, AI grounding, permissions, work inside other applications, migration, federation and external sharing. Ten demo scenarios test capture, disposition and legal hold on the buyer's own documents.

A selection usually runs in three rounds. The package has questions for each:

  • RFI, to the long list. 26 questions screen out products that lack something you need.
  • RFP, to the shortlist. 65 questions ask how each product does the work.
  • Deep dive, to the finalists. 34 questions ask for proof on your own data.

10 demo scenarios tell each vendor what to load and what to show, so every product does the same work in front of you. 90 due-diligence questions cover security, integration, implementation and exit. The scorecard weights the answers and ranks up to five vendors.

Each question comes with why it matters, what a good answer looks like and the red flags, so the people scoring the replies know what to look for.

3 questions from the package

From the RFI round. The first shows part of the guide each question carries; the workbook adds follow-ups, how to verify the answer, a priority and a weight.

1. Describe how your product stores records that must meet the electronic recordkeeping requirements of SEC Rule 17a-4(f) (17 CFR 240.17a-4).

Why it matters. Broker-dealer records under this rule must be kept either in non-rewriteable, non-erasable form or with a complete time-stamped audit trail that allows the original to be recreated. Ordinary versioned storage with administrator permissions may meet neither.

Good answer
  • The answer states which of the two methods the rule allows the product supports, and how.
  • It names the storage option or retention lock and states whether an administrator or the vendor can shorten or remove it.
  • The vendor provides a written third-party assessment that maps the product to the paragraphs of Rule 17a-4(f).
Red flags
  • The answer claims compliance without stating a method.
  • Administrator permissions are the only control preventing deletion.
  • No written assessment or configuration guide is available.

2. Describe what a legal hold in your product prevents for the content it covers, across deletion by users, deletion by administrators, purge from the recycle bin and disposition under a retention rule.

Why it matters. If any route to deletion stays open, content under hold can be destroyed by a retention job or an administrator. The buyer is then exposed to spoliation claims in litigation.

3. List the channels your product ingests content from without a separate capture product, covering scanners and multifunction devices, monitored email mailboxes, browser upload, mobile apps and watched network folders, and mark any channel that needs an add-on module or a third-party component.

Why it matters. Each channel that needs a separate capture product adds a contract, an integration and a handoff where metadata or audit history can be lost. Channels that bypass the main capture pipeline also skip its classification and validation.

Capability areas

Records, Retention & Disposition (13)

File-plan and retention-schedule management, time- and event-based retention triggers, in-place records declaration, immutable (write-once) storage for records that require it, physical records tracked alongside electronic ones (boxes, locations, barcodes, charge-out), disposition review and approval, and the destruction record that proves what was destroyed, when and under whose authority. Out: legal hold and audit trail mechanics (LHA) and contractual data deletion at exit (migration-exit module).

Legal Hold, Audit Trail & Chain of Custody (10)

Placing and releasing legal holds that override retention, hold scoping by custodian, matter or query, the tamper-evident audit trail of views, edits, permission changes and deletions, redaction of content before production or release, and export of content with chain-of-custody evidence for discovery. Out: identity provider sign-in logging and SIEM streaming (security and integration modules).

Capture & Intelligent Document Processing (12)

Scan, email, upload, mobile and office-document ingestion, OCR/ICR on skewed, multilingual and handwritten input, AI classification and metadata extraction, per-field confidence reporting, and the human validation queue for low-confidence results. Out: general model governance and bias testing (AI modules).

Workflow, Forms & Case Management (11)

Low-code process and form design, multi-stage approvals with reviewer rules, review comments and annotations, e-signature steps, task assignment and notification, SLA escalation, and case folders for claims, contracts and investigations. Out: robotic automation of external applications and the commercial terms of any e-signature service.

Repository, Content Model & Versioning (13)

Content types and metadata schemas defined without code, field validation, schema changes applied to existing items, check-out and concurrent-edit protection, version history with comparison and restore, renditions, compound documents and where-used references, and reports on stale or ownerless content. Out: storage infrastructure and hosting (deployment-hosting module).

Search, Taxonomy & Findability (10)

Full-text and metadata search, faceted filtering, managed hierarchical taxonomies, auto-tagging that keeps metadata consistent, near-duplicate and version detection, and permission-trimmed results. Out: generative answers over content (AIG) and search across external repositories (FED).

Generative AI Grounding & Permission Trust (9)

Generative answers and summaries grounded in repository content, source citations down to document and version, enforcement of existing permissions and sensitivity labels at answer time, and exclusion of records, held or restricted content from AI use. Out: platform-level AI safety, red-teaming and model governance (AI modules).

Content Permissions & Oversharing Control (10)

Granular, inheritable permissions by repository, folder, content type, metadata value and action, group- and role-based assignment, broken-inheritance reporting, oversharing and sharing-link detection, and access review reports of who can see what. Out: SSO, SCIM provisioning and MFA (integration and security modules).

Content in the Flow of Work (11)

Filing, retrieval, metadata entry and records declaration from inside the buyer's productivity suite, email client, chat and meeting tool, CRM and ERP screens, desktop sync and mobile access, with governance applied without users leaving those apps. Out: generic API and connector catalogs (integration module).

Legacy Migration & Repository Modernization (9)

Tooling and method for moving content from legacy ECM repositories and file shares while preserving metadata, version history, permissions, retention status and legal holds, bulk import of content and taxonomies, and post-migration reconciliation reports. Out: exiting this vendor at contract end (migration-exit module).

Federation, Content Services APIs & Extensibility (9)

CMIS and content-services APIs, content events and webhooks, in-place management and federated search of content held in other repositories, extension models for custom content types and UI, and promotion of content models and configuration between environments. Out: SSO, rate limits and API versioning policy (integration module).

External Sharing, Publishing & Multilingual Content (8)

Secure sharing and content portals for partners and clients, publishing approved renditions to intranet or portal channels with scheduled release and expiry, locale variants of documents and metadata, and translation export and import. Out: web page rendering, SEO, personalization and A/B testing, which belong to a web content management evaluation.

Demo scenarios

Each scenario lists the data to load before the demo, then the steps to show, and the questions it scores.

  1. Messy scanned batch through capture and validation
  2. Retention rule from trigger event to destruction
  3. Legal hold on content due for destruction
  4. Filing a signed contract from email and chat
  5. Two users ask the AI assistant one question
  6. Migrating a legacy sample with versions and holds
  7. Building a claims case without code
  8. Sharing documents with an external partner
  9. Finding, editing and restoring documents
  10. Finding and fixing overshared content

Due diligence

The workbook carries the screening questions from these modules. Each module is also sold on its own.

Questions about this package

How many Enterprise Content Management (ECM) RFP questions are there?

125 solution questions in 12 capability areas: 26 for the RFI, 65 for the RFP and 34 deep-dive questions for the finalists. The workbook adds 90 due-diligence questions on security, integration, implementation and exit.

What comes with each question?

Why it matters, good-answer signals, red flags, follow-up questions, how to verify the answer (a demo step, a test or a document), and a suggested priority and weight for scoring.

Can I edit the questions?

Yes. The workbook is an ordinary Excel file. Change, add or remove questions, and change the weights; the scorecard recalculates.

Which license do I need?

The Enterprise License covers any number of evaluations inside one organization. The Consultancy License covers use with any number of clients. Neither allows reselling or republishing the questions.

Before you shortlist

The buyer guide compares the products in this category and what decides between them.

Buyer Guide
Enterprise Content Management (ECM)