The problem
SBI Foundation needed to empanel three external agencies at the same time: PR, Digital Marketing, and Creative & Design, each with its own scope, evaluation criteria, and pool of applicants. Run separately, this kind of process is already demanding. Run in parallel, it becomes an exercise in not letting any one of the three fall behind while the other two move.
There was no room for ambiguity in the process itself. Every agency needed a fair, consistent, and defensible evaluation, because the outcome would shape who SBI Foundation worked with for years.
What I did
I managed each empanelment through its full lifecycle: floating the RFPs, fielding and responding to pre-bid queries from applicants, and issuing a corrigendum where clarification was needed mid-process.
To keep evaluation consistent, I built agency outreach databases and ran a structured shortlisting process. Agencies scoring above a minimum technical threshold were shortlisted for presentations, with the top candidates from each RFP invited to present directly. Every shortlisting decision was backed by a formal approval note prepared for the MD, COO, and CFO, so the final call was transparent and traceable, not a judgment call made in isolation.
What changed
All three empanelments moved through their full cycles cleanly, in parallel, without one process compromising another. More importantly, the Foundation now has a repeatable model for running procurement-grade rigor on creative and communications vendors, a process that didn't exist in this form before.
Why it matters to me
This is the part of communications leadership that doesn't show up in a portfolio reel: procurement discipline, fairness to applicants, and paperwork that has to hold up to scrutiny from the CFO's office. It's not glamorous work, but it's exactly the kind of thing that separates a communications function that can be trusted with real budget and real vendor relationships from one that can't.