The TMS RFI Builder
25 questions, plus retail-specific add-ons, that separate genuine agentic capability from rebranded rules. Vendor-neutral by construction, ready to send to procurement.
Why standard RFI templates miss the question.
A feature checklist was a reasonable way to evaluate a rules-driven system. It is the wrong tool for evaluating a system that decides.
Most TMS RFIs still ask whether the system supports multi-stop consolidation, EDI 214, and a stated uptime SLA. Every modern vendor answers yes. The template tells the buyer almost nothing about what now matters most: whether the system can make a sound operational decision and act on it before the planner reaches the alert. Gartner's April 2026 5Cs guidance for AI software procurement pushes buyers toward capability-driven assessment, not feature matching.
This builder applies that approach. 25 core questions test the architectural properties that separate genuine agentic capability from a rules engine with a language-model layer narrating its outputs. Up to 15 retail add-ons surface where they apply. Five inputs shape the question set; export to PDF, XLSX, or Markdown.
Build yours
Ten short inputs. The RFI updates in real time.
A counterpoint.
An RFI qualifies a shortlist. A proof-of-concept proves a vendor.
Use this RFI to take a long list of eight to twelve vendors down to a shortlist of three. From there, run paid proofs-of-concept on a defined slice of your network with measurable success criteria agreed in advance. The difference between genuine agentic capability and marketing copy under that label becomes visible inside three weeks of live operation, not in any written answer.
Question set. 25 core questions organised by functional area: Autonomous Decision-Making, Adaptation and Learning, Real-Time Data and Event Processing, Architecture, AI Governance, Network-Level Optimisation, Operator Experience. Up to 15 retail add-ons surface conditionally. Inputs shape the set: Current TMS state gates migration questions, IT capacity gates architecture-depth questions, Risk appetite adds a governance or autonomy-ramp question, Sub-vertical pre-selects relevant retail add-ons.
Sources. Procurement framework: Gartner, "Leverage the 5Cs Framework" (April 2026). Retail context: Adobe (Jan 2026), Adobe (Sep 2025), NRF (Oct 2025), Brick Meets Click (Jan 2026), McKinsey + Coresight (May 2026). XLSX scoring uses a 0 to 3 scale.
If a question reads as biased or unanswerable, write to us.
