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What we Do?

Why Tender?

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Here are some insights into how RfP Solutions works with clients in Benchmark and Tender Programme Management.

Tenders arise from two principle sources: public sector and private sector.

Sourcing public sector bids is relatively straightforward as all except the smallest local purchases have

to be advertised. RfP Solutions uses specialist bid sourcing to deliver relevant bids to you on a daily basis.

If you choose, we can screen bids against your criteria and forward only those qualifying for further

consideration.

Private sector tender opportunities come to market through a variety of routes. There may be an industry

procurement site; opportunities may be advertised in the trade press; you may get to know that a potential

customer is out to tender.

Sourcing tenders from all markets requires focus on the potential customer well ahead of any bid. Building market intelligence, tracking likely requirements, following key people, presenting yourselves regularly and professionally all matter.

Positioning your organisation as a potential and credible supplier takes time and should be part of the role of all sales and market contact staff.

RfP Solutions puts this activity at Stage 3 of our core tendering sales cycle. We assess it in our Benchmark service and ensure appropriate focus and action in Tender Programme Management.

It is important to go for the right business – and not to go for the wrong business that may destroy value.

Putting a bid together for a major prospect takes time and resource. It can remove people from other work and distract from other business priorities. In a managed tender programme there should be clear rules to control what is bid for and why.

Organisations use two approaches – numeric and the ‘committee of the wise’. A blend of the two is helpful.

Numeric assessment gives weightings and scores to various attributes of the potential business – value, profit, difficulty, investment requirements, geography, strategic importance etc depending on the aspects of new business that matter to you.

Scoring opportunities consistently will soon give you a feel for suitable bids to pursue and the market value of winning.

A recommendation to pursue a bid is normally then considered by the senior team, bringing experienced eyes onto the opportunity and the wider perspective of the business owners or directors. A decision to proceed should not be given without the commitment of sufficient resource - people, time and money - to see the bid to its next stage.

RfP Solutions helps to draw up objective scoring charts for bids; and to establish the evaluation criteria and structure to make sound, consistent bid qualification decisions.

RfP Solutions puts this activity at Stage 4 of our core tendering sales cycle. We assess it in our Benchmark service and ensure appropriate focus and action in Tender Programme Management.

Writing tenders takes time. Re-writing the same material for the next tender is a waste of time.

It makes sense to think early on about saving good material to use again. RfP Solutions adopts consistent approaches to all writing for a client: we make sure that what we say in one document can live comfortably with what we say in another.

Consistent tone-of-voice, styling and target naming conventions help make the production of subsequent tenders quicker and easier. Client approval of tenders ensures that we have authorised material ready to deploy quickly.

Efficient tender production also requires easy access to approved material. Occasional tenderers may be able to get away with cut and paste from previous documents but we find this soon develops shortcomings:

• duplicate statements on the same topic amongst several past documents

• people forget where the best statement is kept

• approved content is spread over numerous documents turning retrieval into the hunt for a needle in a haystack

RfP Solutions recommends storing all approved material in a single file. As content builds up it should be organised by topics.

As productivity becomes an important objective, simple techniques around hierarchy, headings and numbering help to make material organised and accessible.

• Build up material to ‘one best way’ of presenting specific topics

• Establish a logical breakdown for clear structure and granularity

• Build up arguments layer by layer - evidencing understanding and demonstrating your professional approach

RfP Solutions uses specialist stenography services where these can fulfil part of our library build service at lower cost.

For large scale applications, we recommend you consider bid writing software to store content libraries and speed up response build.

Library Build is a major step on the road to effective tendering, underpinning productivity gains and consistent quality. RfP Solutions considers library resources as part of its Benchmark and Tender Programme Management services.