Most people counting RFPs fail before a single vendor responds, because they specify hardware instead of outcomes. Procurement teams write "the solution shall use 3D stereo vision sensors" when what they actually need is "the solution shall count entries and exits with a contractually guaranteed minimum accuracy, verified by an agreed audit method." The first version locks you into one technology generation and a handful of vendors. The second version forces every bidder to compete on the thing you actually care about: reliable data you can act on.
This distinction matters more now than five years ago. Sensor technology cycles are shorter than software contracts, and a people counting RFP that names a specific camera model in 2025 will be procuring obsolete equipment by the time a multi-year framework agreement expires. Below are the requirement areas that separate a tender that attracts strong, comparable bids from one that produces a spreadsheet of incomparable answers.
Every vendor claims "up to 99% accuracy." That phrase is meaningless in a tender context because "up to" carries no obligation. Your RFP should require a contractual minimum accuracy with a defined verification method. As a reference point: Vemco Group commits to a contractual minimum of 96%, with typical field performance of 98–99% where lighting, store layout and visitor behaviour allow. The honest framing is the useful one — a vendor willing to sign a floor of 96% is more credible than one promising a flat 99% with no penalty clause attached.
Specify the audit method in the RFP itself, not in later negotiation. Standard practice is manual video validation over defined time windows, comparing manual counts against system counts, with the acceptance threshold and the remediation process (recalibration at vendor cost, service credits) written into the contract. Also define what counts as a count: staff exclusion, children below a height threshold, groups entering simultaneously, and people lingering in the entrance zone all produce different numbers depending on configuration. Ambiguity here is the single most common source of disputes during acceptance testing.
If your estate already has counting hardware — and in most multi-site retail or public sector portfolios, it does, often from three or four different brands acquired over a decade — a device-independent software platform lets you keep functioning sensors and replace them on their natural lifecycle rather than in one budget-destroying rip-and-replace. Vemco has built software since 2005 on exactly this principle: the platform is sensor-agnostic, which means the RFP can score hardware and software as separable line items.
Write this as a mandatory requirement: "The analytics platform shall ingest data from third-party counting devices, including [list your installed brands], without requiring hardware replacement." Then request the vendor's supported device list as an appendix. Vendors who manufacture their own sensors will resist this clause. That resistance tells you something about who bears the switching cost in your relationship.
Footfall data in isolation answers one question: how many. Its value multiplies when joined to transactions, staffing and marketing data — conversion rate, sales per visitor, labour-to-traffic alignment. Your RFP should require documented integration with POS, BI, ERP and CRM systems, with named connectors or an open API, not a vague "integration capabilities" checkbox. Vemco handles this layer through VemFusion; whatever platform you evaluate, ask for the API documentation during the tender, not after award. If a vendor won't share API docs with a serious buyer under NDA, assume the integration is thinner than the datasheet suggests.
Also specify data export: raw counts at 15-minute (or finer) granularity, exportable in machine-readable formats, with historical data included. This connects directly to the next requirement.
A practitioner observation from too many contract handovers: the most expensive clause in a people counting agreement is the one that isn't there. When a five-year contract ends and the incumbent claims the historical dataset belongs to their platform, the buyer either pays for an export at list price or loses five years of baseline data — the data any successor vendor needs for year-on-year comparisons. Your RFP must state that the buyer owns all count data, that full historical export in a documented format is included at no additional cost at contract end, and that the vendor will support a defined transition period.
For public sector buyers and any EU-operating enterprise, add hosting and privacy requirements: choice of hosted or private cloud deployment, data residency options, GDPR compliance including no storage of identifiable video where counting is the purpose, and a documented data processing agreement. Ask bidders to state certifications such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 and to evidence them, not merely reference them.
Scale claims need evidence. A platform processing 85M+ counts per day across 2,000+ customers and partners in 95+ countries — Vemco's current footprint — demonstrates it can handle an enterprise rollout; a vendor whose largest deployment is 40 stores may struggle at 800. Require references at comparable scale and, for multi-country estates, confirm local partner or support coverage in each operating region. Ask for the SLA structure explicitly: uptime commitment, support response tiers, sensor failure detection and alerting, and who is responsible for identifying a silent sensor outage before it corrupts a month of data. Silent failures — a sensor that keeps reporting zero or a frozen value — do more damage than outright outages, because nobody notices until a regional manager questions a report.
A two-to-four-week proof of concept at one or two representative sites, with the accuracy audit method applied exactly as written in the contract, will tell you more than any 200-page tender response. Vendors confident in their numbers agree to this readily.
If you are drafting a people counting RFP and want requirement language that reflects how deployments actually behave — accuracy audit clauses, sensor compatibility lists, integration specifications — Vemco Group has responded to and helped shape tenders across retail and public sector estates since 2005. Contact the team at vemcogroup.com/contact-us to review your draft requirements or arrange a proof of concept before your tender goes to market.