We lose bids on price regularly, and a fair number of those clients come back a year later. Not because the winning supplier was dishonest, but because the two documents were never comparable. One priced the whole job. The other priced the parts that are easy to price.
This list is deliberately vendor-neutral. Use it on our quotations too.
1. Is the hardware new, and where is it coming from?
Ask for the part numbers and the source. Grey-market equipment is common and looks identical until you need warranty service and discover the serial is registered to a company in another country. Ask directly: is this stock purchased through the manufacturer's authorised distribution for this region?
2. In whose name will the warranty be registered?
The warranty should be registered to your organisation, not to the supplier. If it sits with the supplier and you later change partner, you may find you cannot open a case with the manufacturer at all.
3. What exactly does "installation" include?
This word covers everything from racking a box and leaving to a fully configured, tested and documented system. Insist that the quotation states which. Look specifically for: configuration, integration with existing systems, migration of live data or services, testing against agreed criteria, and out-of-hours work if a cutover is required.
4. Is there a written acceptance test?
How will everyone agree the job is finished? Without written acceptance criteria, "complete" is whatever the supplier says, and the final payment becomes an argument. A short list of tests you will witness is worth more than pages of technical specification.
5. What documentation do you receive, and when?
As-built diagrams, IP addressing schema, rack elevations, configuration backups, credentials handed over in a secure form, and a runbook for routine tasks. If documentation is not listed as a deliverable, assume you will not get it. This is the single biggest difference we find between a supportable environment and one that has to be reverse-engineered later.
6. Who owns the configuration and credentials?
You should, without qualification. Some suppliers keep administrative passwords to protect their support revenue. Ask the question in writing and get the answer in writing. The same applies to bespoke software: if you commissioned it, the source code and repository should be yours on final payment.
7. What are the licence terms, and for how long?
Subscription or perpetual. What happens in year two and year three. Whether support and software updates are included or separate. A quotation that shows a low first-year figure by omitting years two and three is not cheaper, it is differently structured, and you should compare over the same period.
8. What is the workmanship warranty?
Manufacturer warranty covers the hardware. It does not cover the supplier's own work. If a cable is terminated badly or a configuration error surfaces in month seven, who fixes it and at whose cost? We give twelve months on installation and configuration. Ask what you are being offered.
9. Are response times defined by severity, and are they measured?
"Best effort support" is not a service level. Look for defined severity levels, a response target and a restoration target for each, the hours during which they apply, how they are measured, and what happens when they are missed. If there is no reporting, there is no accountability.
10. What is explicitly excluded?
Read the exclusions before the inclusions. Common ones that later become invoices: electrical work, civil work such as core drilling, containment and trunking, licences for existing systems that must be upgraded to be compatible, travel and accommodation for out-of-region sites, and out-of-hours labour.
11. Who is actually doing the work?
Ask whether the engineers are employees or subcontractors, and what certifications they hold. Subcontracting is not automatically a problem, and we do it for specialist scopes, but you should know before rather than after. Ask who your named point of contact is when something goes wrong at two in the morning.
12. What are the payment terms tied to?
Milestones tied to deliverables are healthy for both sides. Large payments on order with no milestone gives you no leverage if delivery slips. Look also for currency, whether the price is fixed or indexed, and validity period.
One question that reveals almost everything. "Can you send me the as-built documentation pack from a similar project, with the client details removed?" A supplier who produces documentation as a matter of course will send it within a day. A supplier who does not will explain why they cannot.
A comparison table worth building
Before you decide, put both quotations into a single sheet with a row for each of the twelve points above and a column per supplier. Where a quotation is silent, write "not stated" rather than assuming it is included. The cheaper bid usually has more blanks, and the sheet turns an argument about price into a conversation about scope.
And a note on the lowest bid
Sometimes the cheapest quotation is simply the best. Efficient suppliers exist and good pricing is real. But if one bid is dramatically below the others for identical scope, the most likely explanations are that the scope is not identical, that the hardware is not what you think, or that the price assumes change requests will make up the difference later.
Ask the cheap bidder to walk you through why. A good answer is reassuring. A vague one is data.