Procurement for a Large Independent School
AI agents delivered a rigorous multi-vendor procurement assessment in weeks, not months.
The Context
A large Australian independent school serving over 20,000 community members — parents, staff, students, alumni, and donors — needed to replace multiple fragmented digital systems with an integrated platform ecosystem. Prior investments in enterprise systems (ERP, student management, and integration middleware) represented architectural standards that any new solution had to respect.
20k+
Community members
3
RFP streams
5
Evaluation phases
6
Risk dimensions assessed
The Approach
Requirements were organised into three distinct RFP streams — CRM & Advancement, Digital Experience Platform, and Marketing & Communications — enabling best-of-breed selection rather than forcing a single-vendor compromise.
A two-stage evaluation filtered vendors through compliance and capability gates before detailed scoring across functional, technical, vendor, and commercial dimensions. Risk assessment ran as a parallel track, ensuring concerns that scoring alone would miss were surfaced and documented.
What the Agents Delivered
The assessment revealed a fundamental market reality: the Australian K-12 education sector lacks a single platform that excels across both CRM/Advancement and Digital Experience domains while maintaining the architectural discipline the school required.
Integration readiness emerged as the critical differentiator — more so than functional features. Vendors with confirmed middleware compatibility and API-first architectures scored consistently higher on both capability and risk dimensions.
The assessment recommended a best-of-breed pairing strategy, distributing functional risk across purpose-built solutions while maintaining architectural coherence through the mandated integration layer. For high-risk vendors, capped-fee discovery phases were recommended as commercial firebreaks before wider commitment.
Lessons Learned
What worked well
- Two-stage evaluation filtered vendors efficiently
- Separate RFP streams enabled best-of-breed selection
- Risk assessment as a parallel track surfaced hidden concerns
What could be improved
- Integration validation should be in Stage 1 gate criteria
- Discovery phases for high-risk vendors built into timeline
- Standardised TCO template needed for comparability
Key Takeaway
AI agents delivered a comprehensive multi-vendor procurement assessment — spanning market analysis, requirements classification, detailed scoring, risk assessment, and strategic recommendations — with a rigour that would typically require months of consultant-led effort.
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