Part 2
In my last article, we looked at what pension funds should be thinking through before they go to market: scoping to outcomes, accounting for private markets complexity, and building governance and lineage into requirements from the start rather than retrofitting them later.
But writing a strong RFI is only half of the challenge. Once responses start coming in, a different set of pressures takes over, and this is often where funds that started strong lose ground.
Evaluation is harder than it looks
Reviewing RFI responses at a public pension fund is rarely a simple side-by-side comparison. Vendors answer the same question in different formats, use different terminology for similar capabilities, and structure demonstrations around their own strengths rather than the fund’s actual operating model. Evaluation committees, often stretched thin already, are left trying to translate marketing language into an honest assessment of fit.
This is where requirements that sound clear on paper can start to blur. A vendor claiming full look-through capability may mean something very different in practice than what a fund actually needs for its private markets exposure. A platform described as fully integrated may still require significant custom work to handle a fund’s specific inter-fund relationships or governance structure. Without a clear framework for evaluation, these differences are easy to miss until well into implementation.
What tends to separate a good evaluation from a costly one
A few practices consistently show up among funds that make it through this stage with the right outcome.
Score against outcomes, not features. A feature checklist rewards platforms that check every box on paper, regardless of how well those features actually work for a fund structure. Scoring against the specific outcomes defined in the RFI, look-through depth, reconciliation accuracy, time to resolve exceptions, keeps the evaluation grounded in measurable operational efficiencies.
Test your own data with a Proof of Concept. A polished demonstration using clean, pre-configured data will look strong for almost any vendor. The real test is how a platform handles your fund’s actual complexity: your custodians, your private asset structures, your reconciliation exceptions. Funds that insist on this step early tend to avoid surprises later. A well-constructed Proof of Concept is typically a strong accelerant for the start of any implementation.
Separate the platform from the implementation team. Some of the biggest differences between vendors show up not in the technology itself but in how a vendor team works through a fund’s specific governance model and inter-fund relationships during implementation. This is difficult to evaluate from a written response alone, and worth probing directly through reference calls and working sessions.
Where Rimes fits into the evaluation
Rimes works with public pension funds and endowments as a specialist in enterprise data management, and we regularly support funds through this exact stage: helping translate a fund’s own operating model and private markets complexity into an evaluation framework that goes beyond a feature checklist.
Because we build long-term partnerships with asset owners rather than positioning ourselves as a fully integrated front-to-back platform, we’re often able to speak plainly about where a specialist approach fits well and where it doesn’t, which tends to be useful during evaluation regardless of which vendor a fund ultimately selects.
Bring us into the conversation before you decide
If your organization is in the middle of an evaluation, or preparing to structure one, it’s worth having a conversation about what a strong evaluation framework actually looks like for your specific operating model.
Contact our team today to talk through where you are in the process.
