How to Write an EV Charging Software RFP That Makes Your Decision Process 10x Easier

With thousands of charging sessions and millions in potential revenue flowing through your EV charging management software (CPMS), selecting the wrong platform puts your entire operation at risk, or at the very least, limits your potential. The right decision requires thorough evaluation across multiple dimensions: technical performance, scalability, integration capabilities, regulatory compliance, and more.

A well-structured Request for Proposal (RFP) is the industry standard approach for making informed software procurement decisions. Beyond simply comparing vendors, an effective RFP helps you map the competitive landscape and identify potential risks before they impact operations.

The EV charging industry presents unique procurement challenges that generic software selection processes simply cannot address. Rather than rigid technical specifications, the most successful RFPs focus on business outcomes—articulating core operational challenges like revenue optimization, network reliability, and compliance management—and invite vendors to demonstrate their best solutions.

Let’s break down the essential elements of an effective CPMS RFP to give you a practical framework for selecting the right charging management solution that serves your business today and scales with you tomorrow.

Understanding the RFx process in EV charging software procurement

The procurement world revolves around three key documents, each serving a distinct approach to gathering vendor information:

RFI (Request for Information) is your exploratory tool when you’re still mapping the landscape of CPMS providers and capabilities. An RFI asks broad questions about vendor offerings, helping you understand what’s possible before defining your specific requirements.

RFP (Request for Proposal) is a comprehensive evaluation tool. It’s ideal when you understand your technical and business requirements, but need detailed information about how different CPMS vendors would address them.

RFQ (Request for Quote) comes into play when you know exactly what you need and are primarily concerned with pricing. For standardized purchases, an RFQ might suffice, but CPMS selection rarely falls into this category.

Your CPMS selection isn’t a simple commodity purchase where the price typically drives the decision process. Unlike buying standardized products, in this case, you’re selecting a strategic platform that will grow with your business and adapt to the evolving EV charging market. This requires:

• Communicating business outcomes rather than just technical requirements
• Allowing vendors to propose alternative approaches to your challenges
• Using open-format questions that reveal vendor thinking
• Being open to learning about capabilities you hadn’t considered

Many CPOs benefit from a multi-step approach. They often start with an RFI to explore the market, followed by a targeted RFP to the most promising vendors, and finally, a detailed negotiation with one or two finalists. This can be particularly valuable for complex deployments spanning multiple regions or with specialized technical requirements.

The main sections in your EV charging software RFP

A well-structured RFP creates clarity for both your team and potential vendors. Here are the essential sections every CPMS RFP should include:

Begin with context that helps vendors understand not just what you need, but why:

• Include your organization’s background with brief history, size, and current market position.
• Outline project context and business requirements, including strategic goals and pain points with current solutions.
• Detail your current charging infrastructure, including the number of stations, hardware types, and geographical spread.
• Share your future growth plans covering expansion targets, new markets, and additional business models.
  

Set clear expectations about the process:

• State the goals and objectives of what success looks like for your CPMS implementation.
• Specify the RFP timeline with submission deadline, evaluation period, and selection date.
• Clarify response format requirements regarding structure, page limits, and submission method.
• Provide detailed submission instructions with contact details, Q&A process, and confidentiality requirements.
  

Transparency about your decision process encourages better-aligned proposals:

• Explain your scoring methodology, detailing how responses will be evaluated, such as using a 1-5 scale.
• Outline your weighted approach, showing the relative importance of different criteria.
• Identify deal-breakers by specifying non-negotiable requirements that would disqualify a vendor.
  

Organize your requirements into three distinct categories:

• Functional requirements (product-specific): What the system needs to do
  • Pricing management and tariff flexibility
  • Smart energy management capabilities
  • User management features
  • Reporting and analytics tools
• Non-functional requirements (technology-specific): How the system needs to perform
  • API capabilities and integration flexibility
  • Scalability (both technical and operational)
  • Customization and differentiation options
  • Security and compliance features
• Vendor-related requirements: Company capabilities and approach
  • Track record with similar deployments
  • Product roadmap and development process
  • Team structure and expertise

Include demo scenarios that allow vendors to showcase their platform, addressing your specific use cases.

Outline your expectations for the vendor relationship:

• Detail the implementation timeline requirements, including deployment schedule milestones and deliverables.
• Specify required vendor personnel availability and dedicated resources throughout implementation and beyond.
• Define how your team will learn the platform, including training formats, materials, knowledge transfer, and ongoing education.
• Establish clear SLA terms covering uptime guarantees, support response times, and issue resolution expectations.
• Detail how updates and enhancements are handled, including version management, notification processes, and backward compatibility.
  

Provide a structured format for pricing information:

• Request comprehensive license fee information, distinguishing between one-time and recurring costs.
• Require a transparent breakdown of implementation fees, including setup, data migration, and integration costs.
• Ask for documentation of any additional costs for training, support tiers, customization, and future services.

By covering these six core sections, your RFP will provide vendors with the information they need to submit relevant, detailed proposals while creating a framework for objective comparison between different CPMS providers.

Essential questions to ask in your EV charging software RFP

Crafting effective questions is perhaps the most critical aspect of your RFP. A thoughtful mix of closed-ended questions (for scoring) and open-ended questions (for insight) will give you the most comprehensive view of potential vendors.

Start with general company information to establish context. While these questions typically won’t make or break your decision, they provide valuable background. Ask about company structure, team composition, industry recognition, and professional affiliations to get a sense of the organization you might partner with.

Customer-focused questions reveal a vendor’s market experience and track record. Inquire about their target customer profile, current user base, experience in your specific markets, and the average length of their customer relationships. Request reference contacts from deployments similar to yours, though be aware that some vendors with white-label agreements may have disclosure limitations.

The CPMS functionality and deliverables section forms the core of your evaluation. This is where you’ll want to understand the vendor’s approach to product development, software updates, and technical capabilities. Focus on charging protocol support (OCPP versions), hardware compatibility, roaming capabilities (OCPI), payment processing options, and smart charging features. Investigate what integrations are available with other business systems and what self-service reporting or management tools are offered to simplify operations. How vendors respond to questions about their roadmap development process and enhancement delivery can reveal much about their product philosophy.

Post-purchase support is equally important, so include customer success questions that illuminate what working with the vendor will be like after signing. Ask about their training methodology, onboarding process, self-service resources, and how they manage customer feedback. These insights help you evaluate not just the software, but the ongoing relationship.

Pricing questions should go beyond basic numbers to understand the underlying model. Request a breakdown of one-time versus recurring costs, any limitations on usage, volume discount opportunities, and contract terms. For CPMSs specifically, pay close attention to how transaction fees are structured, as percentage-based models can significantly impact profitability as your network scales.

Don’t overlook risk management and security considerations. Assess the vendor’s regulatory compliance, system reliability, business continuity planning, and market-specific capabilities. Data security questions about backup policies, hosting infrastructure, security certifications, and testing protocols are essential for protecting your business and customer information.

Finally, as sustainability becomes increasingly important in the EV ecosystem, consider including questions about corporate responsibility policies, environmental initiatives, and impact reporting. This alignment can be particularly relevant for charging networks with explicit green commitments.

RFP best practices for EV charging software selection

How you approach the overall vendor selection process is equally important as having the right components in your RFP document. In The 4 Best Practices for Creating Effective EV Charging Software RFPs, we dive deep into proven strategies that will optimize your selection process.

How AMPECO can support you in your EV charging software procurement

AMPECO brings extensive experience to the CPMS selection process, having worked with charge point operators across 65+ markets worldwide. Our dedicated solution consulting team has navigated over 400 CPMS procurement processes, giving us unique insight into what makes for successful vendor selection.

We’ve established a proven track record with major industry tenders, consistently demonstrating our platform’s capabilities against diverse and demanding requirements. Independent consultants regularly recognize our comprehensive approach to the procurement process, noting our transparency and attention to detail.

For organizations evaluating CPMS options, AMPECO offers hands-on consultation to help you understand how our platform aligns with your technical requirements, operational goals, and long-term business model. Beyond simply responding to your RFP, we invest the required resources to support your procurement process end-to-end, including deep-dive discussions, collaborative workshops, and even parallel testing or sandbox validation where appropriate.

We also recognize that part of the value in a well-run selection process lies in building internal knowledge. That’s why our team is committed to helping you make informed decisions, offering insights on industry standards, deployment models, regulatory considerations, and best practices across different markets and business types. Whether you’re early in your evaluation or further along, we work to ensure you’re not only choosing the right solution, but doing so with clarity and confidence.