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With increasing publicity over the difficulty of winning tenders businesses need to invest time and effort to achieve success.
The tendering process has become more competitive over the last couple of years and it is now essential that you are organised, skilled and knowledgeable to be able to compete on a level playing field. However, following some basic principles can reap reward.
Finding opportunities
Finding the right opportunities in the first place is a mixture of successful business development, efficient sourcing and luck. Devote time to knowing and understanding your existing clients and their work requirements, as well as building relationships with new and prospective clients, including their procurement professionals. Understand their current contracting situations, what work is likely to be available when and keep a tracking database. Being in the buyers’ minds when they are writing tender documentation could significantly increase your chance of success; this requires them to have knowledge of your business and product/service options before the tendering stage. The increasing amount of meet the buyer events and networking forums throughout the country supports this practice.
With regards to efficient sourcing, the increased amount of procurement legislation affecting the public sector, coupled with tighter scrutiny over public funding, has resulted in more transparency, visibility and bureaucracy regarding public contracts. A large majority of all public sector contracts are now advertised, with it being a legal requirement to advertise high value, or above the threshold, opportunities in OJEU (the Official Journal of the European Union).
Unfortunately, because of the volume of available tenders, the inaccuracies of common procurement vocabulary, and the sheer volume of websites advertising lower value tenders, you are likely to spend considerable time tracking down the right opportunities for your business. You can become more efficient in your sourcing by subscribing to a tender tracker service, such as Tenders Direct This service will take the time to understand your business needs and will source opportunities that best match that need, both above and below the threshold. You are then updated regularly with contracts specific to your business.
Organise internally
Organise yourselves internally so that when a bid does present itself you are ready to go. If possible organise a bid team who are knowledgeable and trained in the business and the tendering process. Ensure that each team has someone performing the roles of bid manager, editor, and someone responsible for the pricing elements of the bid. Make sure that all key documents are available and stored in a library. Public sector pre-qualification questionnaires or tenders will require you to demonstrate key policies and procedures. These should be updated, relevant and evident in your business. Know in advance what clients are looking for and prepare your organisation. Most clients will be looking for evidence of quality systems in place so make sure these are up to date, monitored and reported on. Consider appropriate accreditations such as ISO 9001. Whilst you may not be specifically asked for it, in the majority of cases it is much easier to evidence and answer questions than having your own systems.
Choosing to tender
Make a “go or no go” decision with all the appropriate people. You should have a process internally as soon as a suitable tender is sourced, then this is reviewed by all key parties and as a minimum the following questions asked:
- Can we do this contract?
- Can we evidence that we have the right skill, experience, financial standing, and organisation to meet this need?
- Is the contract in a realistic timeframe for our resource budget?
- Are we likely to make a suitable return or are there other reasons for winning this contract?
- Who is the competition likely to be?
- Do we have the time available to write the bid to our satisfaction?
Only when these key questions have been answered should you start to move forward with the bid. All parties should know the role they should play in the bid team and be fully supportive and engaged in the tender process. They should completely understand the requirements of the tender by thoroughly reading all of the necessary documents at least twice and create a bid strategy. This should involve creating a project plan, including key milestones and delegated responsibilities. Included in this should be regular reviews, co-ordinated asking of questions, if applicable, filtering of replies and the organisation of key shared documents so you are all working from the same template.
Answering the questions
Answering the questions in a tender document takes some practice. To ensure top marks the answer must firstly confirm that you can meet requirements and then proceed to outline how you can exceed compliance. It should state what and how the requirement will be met and include the benefits and value of the solution. Make sure to substantiate claims with facts and provide demonstrable evidence. Also ensure you fully understand how each question will be evaluated and how many marks are allocated if relevant – knowing how many marks each question is worth will help you understand what sections of the tender are deemed most important and therefore where you should concentrate more of your time.
Make sure you know what is important to the buyer. The buyer is key to this whole process so answering the questions from their perspective works in your favour and will ensure the highest marks. This is where relationship building comes in to its own. If there is a question about environment and sustainability and you know that they have awards or standards for this ensure that you meet or exceed these standards in the answer. The buyer is looking for confidence in your ability to deliver and minimal risk from a service delivery and commercial perspective. With every answer you give, ask yourself “so what?” If you are saying that you are going to deliver ahead of time, what does this mean for them as a client?
Review and amend
Make time for review and amendment. If possible include an external person in this review – they will be able to run a fresh eye over the tender. Finally ensure there is time to collate, print and bind (if required) your tender and then courier or electronically submit. Remember always follow instructions to the letter and never miss the deadline as nothing will be accepted after this time. If you have been asked to provide three hard copies, provide three hard copies. If you are asked to deliver the document in an unmarked envelope make sure that this is adhered to, and the courier company understands the importance in this. Due to the increasing number of challenges and pressure being put on public sector professionals it has been known for them to discount bids for reasons such as labelled envelopes, even if done inadvertently by a courier. There could be concern that this has been labelled for preferential treatment and this technically is a non-compliant bid.
Feedback
Obtain feedback at the end of the process whether you are successful or unsuccessful. This will ensure you captured what worked and what didn’t for the future. There are also a lot of opportunities to be had by acting professionally and asking the buyer for this feedback and also if there are likely to be other opportunities in the near future. This can form the start of an excellent relationship from a business development perspective, or be an excellent way of identifying key learning needs for the team for the future. In the public sector there is a ten day standstill period before a contract is awarded, to allow for any legal challenges to be made.
Karen Douglas is head of learning and development for Tenders Direct. ACE have partnered with Tenders Direct to allow our members a significant discount. For more information visit www.acenet.co.uk/td
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