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Most warehouse robotics buying decisions happen through a series of sales conversations, demos, and proposals that are difficult to compare apples-to-apples — vendor A answers a question you didn't ask vendor B, and six weeks later you're comparing impressions instead of facts. A structured RFP fixes that: identical questions, identical scoring, sent to every vendor under consideration.
Why Use a Structured RFP Instead of a Sales Conversation
A sales conversation is optimized by the vendor to highlight their strengths and steer around their weaknesses — reasonably, since that's what a sales process is for. An RFP with specific, written questions makes that harder to do, because vague or evasive answers are visible the moment you place them next to a competitor's direct answer to the same question. The goal isn't to be adversarial with vendors — it's to make an internal decision defensible with documentation instead of memory of who gave the best demo.
RFP Questions to Send Every Vendor
Copy these into your own RFP document, fill in your facility specifics, and send the identical question set to every vendor under consideration.
Hardware & Performance
- What are the platform's published accuracy, speed, and throughput specifications, and what independent data (not your own marketing) supports them?
- What are the platform's physical requirements — minimum aisle width, floor conditions, operating temperature range, IP rating?
- What happens to operations if the robot goes offline mid-shift — does anything stop?
Software & Integration
- Which WMS/ERP platforms do you have confirmed, named integrations with — not "we can integrate with anything," but specific systems you've actually connected to in production?
- Who owns building and maintaining the integration — your team, our IT team, or a third party?
- What happens to the integration when we upgrade our WMS?
Deployment & Timeline
- What is your average time from signed agreement to go-live, and what are the most common causes of delay?
- Can you provide 3-5 reference customers in our facility size range who will speak with us directly?
- What does our team need to prepare before your installation team arrives?
Safety & Compliance
- Which specific safety standard does the platform comply with — ANSI/RIA R15.08, ISO 3691-4, both, or neither — and is that self-certified or third-party reviewed?
- Is the platform rated for any hazardous-area classification (ATEX/Zone 1), or does it rely on a mitigation strategy instead?
- What liability coverage does your company carry for robot-caused injury or property damage?
Commercial Terms
- Is this offered as RaaS, outright purchase, or both — and what's the exact list of what's included vs. billed separately (battery replacement, swap units, software updates)?
- What is the uptime guarantee (a percentage, not just a response-time promise), and what's the remedy if you miss it?
- What happens to our data and your hardware if we need to exit the contract early?
Multi-Vendor Considerations
- If we're also running a different manufacturer's robot on the same property, how does your platform avoid interfering with it?
- Does your platform support open interoperability standards like VDA5050, or is your fleet-management software proprietary and closed?
Weighted Vendor Scorecard
Score each vendor 1-5 on each category below, multiply by the weight, and total the result. The weights reflect how predictive each category tends to be of a good or bad deployment experience — adjust them if your facility has unusual priorities.
| Category | Weight | Score (1–5) | Weighted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reference customer quality & willingness to connect directly | 3× | ___ | ___ |
| Documented accuracy/performance data with clear methodology | 2× | ___ | ___ |
| Integration ownership & named WMS compatibility | 2× | ___ | ___ |
| Contract transparency (explicit inclusions, no gotchas) | 3× | ___ | ___ |
| Deployment timeline realism | 1× | ___ | ___ |
| Local support presence & response commitments | 2× | ___ | ___ |
| Safety standard named & documented (not just claimed) | 2× | ___ | ___ |
| Multi-vendor / interoperability readiness | 1× | ___ | ___ |
| Financial stability / established customer base | 1× | ___ | ___ |
| Total (max 85) | ___ | ||
How to Interpret the Results
- No universal passing score. What matters more than the total is whether a vendor scores poorly on reference quality or contract transparency specifically — those two are the hardest to fake and the most predictive of problems after signing.
- A vendor who won't answer a question directly has answered it. Vague responses to specific questions (especially on integration ownership and contract inclusions) are themselves useful data.
- Compare, don't just score in isolation. The scorecard is most useful side by side across 3-5 vendors — a 32 out of 85 might be the best score in a weak field, or the worst in a strong one.
The Shortcut: One Relationship Instead of Five
Running this process against five separate manufacturers means five separate sales cycles, five sets of contract terms to compare, and no one who's incentivized to tell you honestly which platform actually fits versus which one they're trying to sell. Working with an integrator that already carries multiple platforms — Dexory, Corvus Robotics, Locus Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Ghost Robotics, and Asylon, in Actel's case — gets you the comparison from inside one relationship instead of five, with someone who isn't paid more for steering you toward any single answer.
See our full Buyer's Guide for the broader RaaS vs. CapEx breakdown and contract review checklist, or contact Actel Robotics directly and skip the RFP process — we'll walk through the same evaluation framework against our own platforms honestly, including telling you when one of our competitors is the better fit.