Monday 16 November 2009

Responding to Tender Questions (Part 2)

Some more tips on how to respond to tenders. NB do also see Responding to Tender Questions (Part 1).

Use the evaluation criteria
Most public sector tenders (and many corporate tenders) will provide you an evaluation criteria ie how they are going to score your response eg
  • 30% price
  • 60% method statements
  • 10% presentation / site visits
This will often be broken down into more detail. Use this to see where you should be concentrating your efforts - in the example above you can see that method statements are more important than just being the cheapest.

You don't always receive this with the tender but do ask for it!

Innovation
Very few organisations want to stand still, they want to do better; this is why showing how you can bring new ideas to a contract is important. In this fast-moving world, things are always changing so innovation also demonstrates that you are flexible and capable of providing more than a 'me too' solution.

Added value
Customers are always looking to get a better deal so adding value is always going to be an important part of your bid. This means offering more 'value for money' NOT being cheaper eg you may be able to add a service to your bid that costs you little or nothing but saves your customer money... this will interest them!

Differentiation
Innovation and added value also help you stand out from the crowd. If they receive five bids that are all very similar but you have shown new ideas, improvements and added value then you are increasing your chances of success.

Alternative bid?
You need to be careful with this and make sure that:
  1. you do submit a compliant bid first
  2. your alternative bid shows benefit to the customer - not just convenience for you
A client had a great example of this: the tender specification of a component had a lifespan of 10 years but our client showed that for 20% extra cost, a better quality component would last 20 years - that's a saving worth having! (They won the contract.)


Some more to come soon...

Your thoughts or comments are always appreciated.
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous16 November 2009 at 16:33

    This is very good Tony, i particulaly liked your comment about submitting an alternative bid and providing a specific example. These are invaluable tips which are very useful

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown21 August 2012 at 07:29

    Responding to tender questions is best for increase your tender and bidding knowledge. You can bids for tenders like bids tenders, tender electronic, tender for contracts, OJEU tendering, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  3. cameron25 October 2012 at 05:22

    if you have great processes in place to spend on the content, client needs, reviews and value propersitions or win themes, then a proposal software solution is great, as it take away the management and prodcution drains. www.globalkap.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Patrick15 February 2013 at 11:47

    Hey admin, these are good guidelines i appericiate your efforts, i think same goes for online tenders. And we can apply these principles over any kind of tenders.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown5 June 2013 at 10:17

      Procurement bodies, especially in the public sector, generally include environmental questions in a tender to help them filter out the weaker bids. The environmental section of the tender usually equates to 10%-20% of the total evaluation mark – enough to tip a bid in your favor if you illustrate the right delivery capabilities and are competitive in terms of value for money.

      Accounting Banking and Legal Tenders

      Delete

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