Key Takeaways
- Enterprise AI vendor evaluations that lack a structured RFP framework consistently miss critical security and compliance requirements.
- This template covers 6 domains: Security & Compliance, Model Capability, Enterprise Integration, Commercial Terms, Support & SLA, and Governance & Ethics.
- Weight security and compliance criteria at 30% of your total score — it's the most commonly underweighted domain in initial evaluations.
- Issue the same RFP to all vendors simultaneously. Vendors who see a structured evaluation respond more seriously than those approached informally.
- Require vendor responses within 15 business days and a live demonstration within 30 days. Vendors who can't meet these timelines signal poor enterprise readiness.
How to Use This Claude Vendor Evaluation Template
The Claude vendor evaluation RFP criteria below are designed to be adapted for any enterprise AI platform procurement — not only Claude. Issue this template to all vendors under consideration simultaneously, including Anthropic (for Claude), OpenAI (for ChatGPT Enterprise), Google (for Gemini Enterprise), Microsoft (for Copilot for M365), and Amazon (for Q Business).
Each criterion should be scored on a 1–5 scale. Use the scoring guide below. Apply category weights based on your organisation's priorities — regulated industries should weight Security & Compliance at 35–40%, while organisations primarily evaluating capability for knowledge work can weight Model Capability at 30%.
After scoring all vendors, calculate a weighted total score for each. The highest-scoring vendor should be your primary recommendation to the executive committee, accompanied by qualitative notes on any significant differentiators or disqualifying criteria. Before issuing this RFP, complete the strategic preparation steps outlined in the Claude enterprise deployment checklist.
Scoring Guide
5
Fully meets requirement. Vendor provides documented evidence, references, or live demonstration. No conditions or exceptions.
4
Largely meets requirement. Minor gaps or conditions that do not materially affect enterprise readiness.
3
Partially meets requirement. Significant gaps or workarounds required. Acceptable with mitigation plan.
2
Minimally meets requirement. Substantial gaps. Acceptable only if low-priority criterion.
1
Does not meet requirement. Consider a disqualifying criterion if marked Critical.
Domain 1: Security & Compliance
This is the highest-weighted domain for most enterprise evaluations. Failure here is not a negotiating point — it is a disqualifier. Weight this domain at 25–35% of total score.
S1
SOC 2 Type II certification CRITICAL
Request the most recent report. Verify audit period, audit firm, and scope. A Type I report or a >12-month-old Type II report is insufficient.
S2
ISO 27001 certification HIGH
Required for most regulated industry deployments. Verify scope and certificate expiry date.
S3
Data residency options (region selection) CRITICAL for EU/regulated
Can data processing be limited to your required geographic region? What are the available options and at what price tier?
S4
Zero training data retention guarantee CRITICAL
Is your organisation's data used to train future models? This must be a contractual guarantee, not just a default setting. Verify in the DPA.
S5
Data encryption at rest and in transit CRITICAL
What encryption standards are used? AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit is the baseline expectation.
S6
GDPR compliance and Data Processing Agreement CRITICAL for EU
Does the vendor provide a GDPR-compliant DPA? What are the data subject rights provisions? What is the breach notification timeline?
S7
HIPAA Business Associate Agreement availability CRITICAL for healthcare
For healthcare organisations processing PHI, a BAA is a legal requirement. Confirm it is available and review its scope.
S8
Audit logging and usage monitoring capabilities HIGH
What audit data is captured? Who can access it? How long is it retained? Can it be exported to your SIEM?
S9
Penetration testing and vulnerability disclosure programme HIGH
Does the vendor conduct regular third-party penetration testing? Do they have a public vulnerability disclosure programme?
S10
VPC / private cloud deployment option HIGH for regulated industries
Can the platform be deployed in a Virtual Private Cloud environment with network isolation? What are the requirements and additional costs?
S11
Access control and role-based permissions HIGH
What granularity of access control is available at the admin level? Can feature access be restricted by user role, team, or department?
S12
Incident response and breach notification commitments HIGH
What is the contractual breach notification timeline? What support does the vendor provide during a security incident?
Domain 2: Model Capability
Model capability criteria should be evaluated through structured hands-on testing, not vendor marketing materials. Request a 30-day evaluation licence and test against your actual use cases.
M1
Long document comprehension (100K+ tokens)
Test with your actual long documents — contracts, reports, regulatory filings. Compare output quality at context limits. Claude's 200K context window is a significant differentiator for document-heavy work.
M2
Complex reasoning and multi-step analysis
Test with your organisation's most complex analytical tasks. Structured legal analysis, financial modelling commentary, and technical architecture reviews are good benchmarks.
M3
Code generation and review quality
Test against your actual codebase languages and patterns. Include edge cases and security-sensitive code. Evaluate both generation quality and review accuracy.
M4
Instruction following fidelity
How reliably does the model follow complex, multi-part system prompt instructions? Test with your most detailed system prompts. Claude's Constitutional AI architecture produces high instruction fidelity.
M5
Hallucination rate on domain-specific queries
Test with queries where you know the correct answer. Use your specific domain — legal, financial, medical, technical. Measure both frequency and severity of errors.
M6
Structured output reliability (JSON, XML, tables)
For API integrations and agent workflows, reliable structured output is essential. Test JSON mode or tool use patterns against your integration requirements.
M7
Multilingual capability (if required)
Test in all languages your organisation requires. Include translation quality, tone preservation, and professional register in each language.
M8
Model variety (small/large/reasoning tiers)
Does the vendor offer multiple model tiers for different cost/performance trade-offs? Claude's Opus/Sonnet/Haiku family is a significant advantage for cost-optimised enterprise deployments.
M9
Vision and document processing capability
Can the model process images, PDFs, and scanned documents? Test with your actual document types — invoices, contracts, technical drawings.
M10
Model update frequency and version stability
How often are models updated? Can you pin to a specific model version for production stability? What is the notice period before model deprecation?
Domain 3: Enterprise Integration
I1
SSO / SAML integration with major IdPs CRITICAL
Must support your identity provider (Okta, Azure AD, Ping, etc.) via SAML 2.0 or OIDC. Test the actual integration — SSO configuration issues are common.
I2
SCIM provisioning for automated user management
Automated user provisioning and de-provisioning via SCIM is essential for large organisations. Manual user management at scale is a security and compliance risk.
I3
REST API quality, documentation, and SDK availability
Evaluate the API documentation, SDK quality (Python, JavaScript/TypeScript at minimum), and developer experience. Request access to the developer portal before signing.
I4
Native integrations with your core business systems
Does the vendor offer native connectors for Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Jira, Confluence, or SAP? Claude's MCP ecosystem is particularly strong for custom integrations.
I5
Extensibility framework for custom integrations
What is the vendor's framework for custom integrations? Claude's Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that enables any internal system to connect — a significant advantage over proprietary plugin systems.
I6
Cloud platform availability (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Is the platform available via your cloud provider's marketplace? Claude on AWS Bedrock is important for organisations with data sovereignty requirements or existing AWS commercial relationships.
I7
API rate limits and throughput at enterprise scale
What rate limits apply at your required usage scale? Can limits be increased for enterprise customers? What is the process for limit increases?
I8
Mobile access and desktop application availability
Does the vendor offer iOS and Android apps? A desktop application? These are significant adoption enablers for field teams and executives.
I9
Browser and productivity suite integration
Does the vendor offer browser extensions or native integrations with Microsoft Office / Google Workspace? Claude for Chrome and Claude for Excel are differentiators for knowledge worker deployments.
I10
Agent and automation framework capability
Does the vendor offer an agent SDK or orchestration framework? Claude's Agent SDK supports production multi-agent deployments — evaluate against your automation roadmap requirements.
Domain 4: Commercial Terms & Pricing
C1
Total cost of ownership at your required scale
Calculate TCO across 1-year and 3-year scenarios. Include licence fees, API costs, integration development, training, and ongoing administration. Use our
Claude ROI calculator as a template.
C2
Volume discount structure and enterprise pricing flexibility
What discounts are available at your seat count? What are the multi-year commitment terms? Enterprise AI pricing has significant flexibility — always negotiate before signing.
C3
Contract flexibility: seats, terms, and expansion
Can you add seats mid-contract without penalty? What are the minimum commitment periods? What are the exit terms if the vendor is acquired or the product is discontinued?
C4
Pricing transparency and predictability
Are API costs predictable? Does the vendor offer spending caps or alerts? Unpredictable AI costs are a significant procurement risk — especially for API-based deployments.
C5
MSA and contract terms maturity
Does the vendor have an enterprise-standard MSA? How many legal review cycles do comparable enterprise contracts typically require? A vendor whose legal team is unfamiliar with enterprise procurement norms is a red flag.
C6
Intellectual property provisions
Who owns the outputs of the AI system — your organisation or the vendor? Are there any IP restrictions on how outputs can be used commercially?
C7
Liability and indemnification terms
What does the vendor indemnify against? What are the liability caps? This is particularly important for regulated industries where AI output errors carry significant risk.
C8
Vendor financial stability and long-term roadmap
What is the vendor's funding position and revenue trajectory? What is their stated product roadmap for the next 2–3 years? This is strategic infrastructure — vendor longevity matters.
Domain 5: Support & SLA
SP1
Uptime SLA and historical availability data
What is the contractual uptime SLA? Request 12 months of historical uptime data from the public status page. A 99.9% SLA = ~8.7 hours downtime per year. Verify what "uptime" includes — API, web interface, admin console.
SP2
Enterprise support tier availability (24/7, named CSM)
Is 24/7 technical support available? Is there a named Customer Success Manager at the enterprise tier? What is the guaranteed response time for P1 (production down) issues?
SP3
Onboarding and implementation support
What onboarding support does the vendor provide directly? Is there a formal onboarding programme, implementation guides, or dedicated onboarding resources?
SP4
Training resources and user enablement materials
Does the vendor provide training materials, certification programmes (like the
Claude Certified Architect certification), or learning paths for enterprise users?
SP5
Partner ecosystem and third-party implementation support
Does the vendor have a structured partner network with certified implementation partners? The
Claude Partner Network is a key enabler for enterprise deployments that require specialist support.
Domain 6: Governance & Ethics
G1
AI safety architecture and harmful output prevention
What is the vendor's approach to preventing harmful outputs? Claude's Constitutional AI is Anthropic's published safety methodology — request documentation on the specific safety approach.
G2
Acceptable use policy enforcement mechanisms
Can you customise what topics and content types the model will and won't engage with via the system prompt or admin controls?
G3
Bias testing and fairness documentation
Does the vendor publish bias testing methodologies and results? For HR, hiring, or customer-facing applications, bias documentation is increasingly a regulatory requirement.
G4
AI regulatory compliance readiness (EU AI Act, etc.)
Is the vendor actively preparing for EU AI Act compliance? What is their published position on high-risk AI system classification? This will be material for regulated industry deployments in 2026–2027.
G5
Transparency and explainability of AI outputs
Does the model support citations and source attribution? Can it explain its reasoning process? Claude's extended thinking mode is a significant differentiator for high-stakes decision support applications.
How Claude Scores Against This Template
We publish this Claude vendor evaluation template as a service to enterprise procurement teams — not as a one-sided advertisement for Claude. But given our depth of experience with the platform, it is useful to note where Claude excels and where it requires attention when evaluated against these criteria.
Claude scores particularly strongly on Security (S1–S6: SOC 2 Type II, GDPR DPA, zero training retention), Model Capability (M1: 200K context window; M4: instruction following fidelity), Integration (I5: MCP open standard extensibility; I6: AWS Bedrock availability), and Governance (G1: Constitutional AI safety architecture). For a detailed head-to-head comparison, see our Claude Enterprise pricing comparison and our Anthropic vs OpenAI vs Google enterprise analysis.
The areas requiring most attention in a Claude evaluation are HIPAA BAA availability (available at enterprise tier — confirm in contract), FedRAMP certification (in progress as of 2026 — relevant for US federal deployments), and native Microsoft 365 integration depth compared to Microsoft Copilot. These are not disqualifiers for most organisations, but they should be explicitly addressed in the procurement process.
If you need support running a structured vendor evaluation, including live demonstrations and structured scoring sessions across multiple vendors, our Claude consulting team provides vendor-neutral assessment facilitation. See also our Enterprise AI Procurement Guide for the full process context.
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