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Choosing a bid management consultancy

13/02/2013 by · Leave a Comment

There are many reasons for recruiting a bid management consultancy:

  • The next tender is a must win contract
  • You want to improve your bid writing capabilities
  • You are short of bid management resource or a Bid Director
  • You need to find the best contract opportunities
  • Your Win Rate is simply not where you want it to be

Writing and managing a bid for a commercial contract or a local authority tender can be a daunting prospect, demanding skills that your company may not have needed before. However, hiring a bid management consultancy represents an additional cost, so what should you look for when choosing?

Find Tenders

It may be that you want to find the best contract opportunities for your business. Find bid writers who know their way around the arcane tender websites to find contracts for tender in whichever industry you are involved in, from construction contracts to public sector tenders. Moreover, find a bid writer who will be honest when assessing your capabilities and chances of success. There’s no point in wasting precious time and money applying for tender contracts you can’t win.

Bid Writing

Writing bids is a complex and time consuming process. Find bid writers who have years or decades of practice in assembling bid proposals, who understand the art of tender document templates and win themes and the most effective use of language. Search out bid writers with experience of public sector tendering as both bid writer and procurement officer, with detailed insider knowledge of the UK tender process. A good consultancy will vastly increase the pool of skills available to any company tendering for contracts.

Bid Management

Managing a bid is an enormous undertaking often involving months of work. Many stakeholders and hundreds of documents require co-ordination. Look for veteran bid managers and Directors with reputable accreditation (APMP or similar) and many years of understanding in how to win tenders. Find bid managers or Bid Directors who know how to deal with the inevitable crises and problems, and are willing to work out of hours to fix them.

How to Win Bids

Bid consultants don’t just have to write your bid; they can also transform your capabilities. Training sessions can show your staff how to tender for contracts and greatly improve their processes. They can help assemble the necessary documents and skills to get those local government tenders or commercial opportunities. Properly trained and experienced bid consultants can help you win that tender contract even if they are not involved in the actual process, by transferring their skills and experience to your team.

Win that Bid

Win that Bid possesses all of the qualities and experience needed to help you win that tender contract. Our multi-sector bid management specialists have worked across the industry and in procurement, and used those skills to transform the capabilities – and bottom line of many organisations. From training to bid writing, Win that Bid today!

Filed Under: Bid Management, Bid Writing, Bids, Proposal, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Top Tips, Win Bids, Win That Bid · Tagged: , , ,

Qualifying the Bid

01/08/2012 by · Leave a Comment

The G4S debacle we discussed in the last post raised a big issue for bid writers: how to qualify your bid. Is that astonishing £300 million tender opportunity going to turn into a real disaster for your company? Less melodramatically, are your bid writers going to waste weeks of sleepless nights filling out PQQs trying to win a bid you weren’t ever going to win?

Don’t go for every bid

Setting aside an apparent opportunity isn’t the same as wasting one. Trying to win a tender opportunity means putting in an enormous investment in time and energy. Much better to put that effort into a quality proposal than spreading it across dozens of failed prospects.

Before you choose which bids to aim for, read the tender contracts in detail and consider:

  • Are you qualified for the bid? Do you have the right accreditation, the right resources, the right documentation to get through the PQQ? More to the point, can you demonstrate that to the procurer?
  • Is the bid right for your business? Can you demonstrate prior work for clients in the same sector?
  • Do you understand the bid requirements? That unclear pricing structure could really hurt you after the contract is won, as happened to G4S!
  • Who is the buyer? Do you have a relationship with them? Will you be able to establish a dialogue with them? Will they ask you to provide five times the number of personnel you were contracted for at the last minute, and do you have contingency plans if they do?
  • Who are your competitors? Can your bid writers demonstrate why it is that your company will be a better choice?

Get some sleep!

The answers to those questions aren’t always as obvious as they sound, particularly in tender contracts with long or arcane PQQs. Win that Bid has a lot of experience in helping people to get those winning contracts, but also in avoiding two of the great curses of bid writing: wasting time on failed bids, or winning bids that the company was never suitable for in the first place.

Filed Under: Opportunities, PQQ, PQQs, Procurement, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Win That Bid · Tagged: , , , , , ,

Have you been paid yet?

11/01/2012 by · Leave a Comment

Recently an alliance of small business lobbying groups sent a letter to the Business Minister Mark Prisk, highlighting one of the biggest problems facing companies tendering for contracts in the UK today: late payment.

The numbers present a clear picture of the both the scale of the problem and who the mostly likely perpetrators are.

  • Large companies are responsible for 48% of late payments and account for most of the £24 billion owed to small and medium suppliers in the UK.
  • Late payments for UK Government tenders or charity work constitute just 9%, less than public/private concerns.
  • Both the public and the third sector have improved their record in recent years .
  • Prominent excuses given include a lack of payment authorisation and reports that the “cheque is in the post”.

Encouraging Prompt Payment?

Businesses can be scared to “name and shame” large corporations who mess around with their tender contracts, despite the fact that late payments break businesses. In these circumstances, it can be difficult to know exactly who to complain to. A poor UK government tender PQQ structure can be flagged up for the Cabinet Office to look into, but what about a multinational?

You could try encouraging prompt payment by the tender issuer. The letter to the Business Minister suggested a clampdown on “prompt payment discounts”, a strategy in which suppliers offer discounts on products in exchange for guarantees of payment on time. Several business advice websites suggest doing just that to incentivise punctual payments for commercial tenders. A company considering this should ask themselves whether they want to be paying the buyer extra to do what they claimed they were going to do on the tender contracts.

What can businesses do?

The best answer – and unfortunately the most complex to implement – is to make your business more resilient in times of unexpected cash flow problems relating to late payment. We can help you transform the capabilities of your business. Firstly, it’s important to consider how many sources of income the company has. It is dangerous for a company to rely on just one major contract or tender.  Another important safeguard to pursue is a high credit score. Being transparent about the financial state of the company can be helpful in other aspects of winning bids, especially for new companies who may not be able to provide the several years of financial data requested by most UK government tender PQQs. Win that Bid’s Bid Management service can help you assemble the right documents.

Don’t let yourself get pushed around.

Companies should also research the organisation issuing the tender. The sources of information aren’t always immediately obvious. This is an area in which a consultancy like Win that Bid can really help you in assessing whether to pursue an opportunity. Carrying out credit checks on potential customers is a good start. Communication between the supplier and the customer is always important: You should be clear about what the payment terms of the tender contract are and request clarification if they aren’t clear. And if the customer does try to change the terms of the contract, a supplier should make it clear that it expects something in return.

Filed Under: General, PQQ, PQQs, Procurement, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Top Tips, Win Bids, Win That Bid · Tagged: , , ,

SMEs and public sector tenders

16/12/2011 by · Leave a Comment

What do the latest changes mean for your business?

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can feel locked out of government tenders by the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) requirements. The Cabinet Office wants this to change and over the last year they’ve taken some steps to do just that. In this article we’re going to take a look at what they’ve recommended and how that could make things easier for your business and applying for public sector tenders.

There are a few issues that face SMEs when public sector tendering. The first is that public sector departments are risk averse because of limited budgets and competing political demands. No authority wants to hire a small company and discover it can’t fulfil the contract. To avoid this UK government tenders focus on compliance and financial robustness, favouring established companies.

Worse, SMEs can be inadvertently filtered out of the process by asking far too much of them in compliance requirements or in the scale of the contract. The Cabinet Office is currently recommending that contracting authorities split their contracts into separate micro-lots for each required service. This ought to help SMEs by reducing the size of each contract and allowing them to take advantage of their specialist expertise that a large company trying to do everything might not possess.

The Finance Problem

Public sector tendering often requires demonstrating financial stability backed up with plenty of financial data, which can be a problem for many SMEs. They may simply have not been operating long enough to meet those requirements and probably lack the required level of insurance. They may not have enough staff to collate all the information they need.

The new guidelines encourage procurers to allow for alternative forms of financial information. UK government tenders and their contracting authorities are being encouraged to be more open about exactly what details are necessary.

Changes in “Technical and Professional Capacity”

The last thing any local authority wants is to be made complicit in some awful pollution or racism scandal by one of their contractors. So they’ve tended to put equal opportunities, health and safety and environmental compliance into the “technical or professional capacity” section of the PQQ. It can be expensive to prove that an SME is in compliance with all these rules.

The Cabinet Office has asked contracting authorities to remember that this section should only be about previous similar contracts, quality control and technical staff. This doesn’t mean that the compliance issues are now irrelevant: instead, the local authority is likely to use the “eligibility” section to ascertain whether the bidder has a record of dumping hydrogen sulphide into municipal swimming pools. The hope is that the move will draw a much clearer distinction between mandatory and discretionary grounds for disqualification, helping SMEs. If a contracting authority isn’t clear about where the line is, ask!

Big Changes in Best Practice

The Cabinet Office has issued a model PQQ in line with all these new changes which government departments are now required to use. By only including the minimum requirements of the regulations, the hope is that the bar won’t be set too high for SMEs to consider. Better still for SMEs, the Cabinet Office has a “mystery shopper” report. Suppliers are being encouraged to report poor procurement practices and unclear tenders.

The new guidelines for PQQs all aim to make the process simpler and cheaper for SMEs to engage in, and provide more outlets for them to question decisions or get feedback. Not all of the potential hurdles have disappeared, but they have got lower.

We would love to hear about how the changes have affected your business so what do you think?

Interested in finding local government opportunities?

Interested in hiring a bid writer to help you win a local government tender?

Filed Under: Bid Writing, General, Opportunities, PQQ, PQQs, Procurement, Tender Writing, Tenders, Top Tips, Uncategorized, Win Bids, Win That Bid ·

Good proposal feedback questions to ask the client

29/10/2011 by · Leave a Comment

Not getting chosen at the end of a long tender or bid process is painful.  However, it is a necessary evil of taking part.  Once the initial shock is over, the worse thing you can do is to forget about it and move on to applying for the next one that crosses your desk.  One of the important things to do is to conduct an internal and external review.   We often get asked how to phrase these questions when you are sitting in front of the buyer as it could be tempting to scream at them… “What’s Wrong With Us?  Do you know how much time we spent on working on this proposal????”

Here are some of our suggestions:

1.  How did the proposal contribute to loosing the tender?

2.  Was our proposal easy to evaluate?

3.  Did the proposal comply?

4.  How did it compare on content and price to our other competitors?

5.  Would you recommend we continue to respond to your tenders?

We would love to hear from you and what you find works the best/gets the best results.

Filed Under: Bid Writing, Bids, Business Strategy, Home News, Win That Bid · Tagged: , ,

Two Stage Tendering for Destination Builds

28/09/2011 by · Leave a Comment

Perhaps the most crucial factors contributing to the success of a destination builds (tourist attractions, hotels, restaurants, head offices) are location and design.  Once chosen, there’s not much you can do about location.  Design however, is a different matter.  Not only does it cause challenges throughout the initial fit out, over time the building will need to re-design to keep up to date.

There are four main methods of procurement and central to each is the responsibility of design.

1) Construct Only: This method sees the developer appoint a design team which will control all areas of design until the project is finished.  Once the design of the building is completed the developer will tender for a construction team.  This tender will be solely for construction duties and as bidding is for a finished design, tenderers can bid a lump sum.  The main advantage of this procurement process is that the developer retains control of design, vital to the owners. The contractor is also taking on less risk than a project that may still change so costs can be driven down.  However, this step by step process demands a lot more time than ones where building and design can overlap or coincide.

2) Design and Build: Design and build procurement involves the developer having their own design team which will begin the design process.  Then, once the design has reached a suitable stage, a design-build contract is issued.  The contractor who wins this contract will continue to develop the design, replacing the original team, while carrying out building works.  An advantage is that the work can begin earlier which will save the developer money.  It also limits the risk of extension of time claims due to design error.  There are some disadvantages.  Tenders will ask a higher price than Construct Only contracts, as they do more work.  Also, the developer loses design ownership key to the brand of the building.  It is possible for the developer to employ a team of design monitoring consultants but the opportunities for confrontation and crossed wires arise, as do more costs.

3) Two-Stage Tendering:  This can be seen as a adaptation to the Design and Build process.  It is sometimes thought of as more suitable for smaller, less complex buildings, but is increasingly popular.  This arrangement involves a contractor carrying out pre-construction work and assisting the developer’s design team.  It is usually let on a guaranteed maximum price basis.  When the design has progressed to a point where construction is able to begin, the developer will enter into either a construct only contract or possibly a design-build contract to complete the works.  The benefits of two-stage tendering to the developer involve retaining the all-important design control.  Also, as the developer has been able to engage the contractor early and obtain a fixed price for the second stage, this system provides cost and time savings.

4) Construction Management: With this system, the developer employs a construction manager as an advisor.  All works required throughout the building will be divided into packages and the construction manager will give guidance on the best way to do this.  The developer then enters into each separate contract while the construction manager oversees the process.  As everything is done under separate contracts, pre-construction works can begin while design is still being finalised.  When the design is finished one single contract can be issued for the rest of the works.  The main advantage to this method is the degree of control the developer keeps over the design.  The main disadvantage though, is that there is no single point of contact on the construction side.  Errors, queries and suggestions must involve tracking down the relevant contractor.  This is difficult for the developer and very unattractive to any lenders.  Previously, construction managers were assumed to have relatively little liability, as they are have no direct, contractual link with sub-contractors.  However, after the high profile Great Eastern Hotels case, construction managers and developers may view the arrangement differently.

Need tender writing or bid management assistance? Get in touch 0203 405 1850 or email hello@winthatbid.com

Filed Under: Bids, Business Strategy, Procurement, Tenders, Win That Bid · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to Find Tenders

05/09/2011 by · Leave a Comment

People often ask us how to find tenders for their business.  There are hundreds of portals in the UK – some generalist, some specialist.  Some charge a membership fee and others are free.  This article sets out a few ways to find yourself some great tendering opportunities.

Contracts Finder
 Contracts Finder is a free new service for businesses, government buyers and the public. This service comes from government under its transparency commitment and you can find:

· live contract opportunities

· closed tender documentation

· contract awards and contract documents

TED (Tenders Electronic Daily)
TED is the online version of the ‘Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU)’, dedicated to European public procurement. Public procurement in the UK and European Union is governed by a number of Directives and Regulations and all tender opportunities above a certain monetary threshold must be published in the OJEU. TED provides free access to business opportunities. It is updated five times a week with approximately 1500 public procurement notices from the European Union, the European Economic Area and beyond. Register on the TED website for free to get started or contact the Enterprise Europe Network for further advice and support.

Where to find Global Sporting Opportunities

Where to find Local Authority opportunities

It is worth finding out how your local authorities manage their tenders however we find that in the majority they use their own online portals, advertise in local papers and/or use an external company like Exor to manage their preferred supplier database.

Central Government

Try these for size

NHS

The Department of Health is divided into a number of business units for purchasing purposes, each with their own budgets.  We have selected a few ways to monitor different tendering and business opportunities

Specialist

Each sector often has its own specialist portals and we have put together a list of some of them

What do you think of our How to Find Tenders list – have you got a favourite to add?

Filed Under: Bids, Business Strategy, Find Tenders, General, Olympics 2012, Opportunities, Procurement, Top Tips, Win That Bid · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tender Writing Insights: The Devil is in the Detail

30/08/2011 by · Leave a Comment

When it comes to completing PQQs or tender writing the devil is often in the detail especially the closer you get to the submission deadline.

Take for example a company Win That Bid worked with a few years ago. The PQQ was for a contract with the Irish Government. At short notice, the client had asked us to complete the tender writing part of the PQQ and help them develop their win themes. All very straightforward and as often happens on the final day we worked onsite to ready the submission which included the PQQ submission itself and all associated documentation such as insurance certificates, health & safety policy, accounts, etc. Job complete we left the client’s office. Some weeks later we received news the PQQ had been unsuccessful, the reasons; the health & safety policy hadn’t been signed and the the insurance certificates weren’t included. How could this be? We knew they were in the pack before we left. It turned out the secretary in charge of sending the PQQ to Dublin with two days until the deadline automatically put it in the normal post. On realising the error of her ways she quickly printed out the pack again and sent it by courier. Of course this was the first submission received as well as the one which arrived prior to the deadline and therefore was the one marked by the procurement team.

The moral of the story – do not leave your tender writing and PQQ submission until the last minute whether its submitted by post or via an online portal. From the off, create a timetable of deliverables to lead you to two or three days prior to submission and build in some slack.

For all your PQQ, tender writing or bid co-ordination needs contact hello@winthatbid.com or give us a call on 0203 405 1850.

Filed Under: Bid Writing, PQQ, PQQs, Proposal, Tender Writing, Tenders, Top Tips, Win That Bid · Tagged: , ,

Tender Writing Insights: Managing Online Tender Portals

06/05/2011 by · 1 Comment

Recently, some of the Win That Bid team completed a large and complex bid involving the public sector portal ‘Bravo’. There are hundreds of online procurement portals around all with their own language and foibles. However, there are some basic principles that can help you when, with that deadline looming, you find yourself wrestling desperately trying to submit your online tender.

Access

Know your login details and ensure you have the correct level of user access

Having spent weeks or months with your head buried in the tender writing documentation, the time has arrived to upload your submission. And if you’ve forgotten your login details or do not have a sufficient level of access let’s hope you haven’t realised this too late i.e. out of working hours, during busy periods or just prior to the deadline. Online help will only get you so far so if it’s a human being you need to speak to then make sure you do so in advance.

Utilise quieter periods

Early mornings, late nights, weekends and Bank Holidays are ideal

The majority of your competitors will leave their tender writing and submission to the last minute. The risk here is that the portal will time out due to the sheer volume of documents being uploaded. The Win That Bid team who worked on this latest bid submitted documents as they were completed, and in some cases as far as two weeks in advance. They also made use of early mornings, late nights and the Easter holidays.

Upload larger documents first

Larger documents take longer

As larger documents take longer to upload start with them first. This is especially the case with heavy document based tender portals such as Bravo that may not have a limit on the amount of tender documents you are allowed to submit.

Save, save, check, check again and save

Don’t get timed out or caught out

Tender portals will usually time out after 15 minutes of being dormant. Make sure to hit save as soon as you’ve uploaded your latest documents.

Once you have finished uploading go back and check all questions have been answered and all documents have been uploaded. Often you can print the documents list from the portal and more than often you will find there is at least one document missing. Never assume a document has saved.

And if it’s all too much outsource your tender writing, bid and document management to the 2am wrestling experts at Win That Bid.

Filed Under: Bid Management, Opportunities, PQQ, Procurement, Proposal, Proposal Template, Proposal Writing, Tender Writing, Tenders, Top Tips, Win That Bid · Tagged: , , , ,

Are you ready for the Bribery Act?

06/04/2011 by · Leave a Comment

The Bribery Act 2010 is due to come into effect very soon but are you prepared for the change it will bring?

Increasingly, public sector tenders require the supplier to explain their anti-bribery and anti-corruption processes and procedures. Despite a number of delays The Bribery Act is now due to come into force on 1st July 2011. The purpose of the Act amongst other things will be to:

  • provide a more effective legal framework to combat bribery in the public or private sectors
  • create two general offences covering the offering, promising or giving of an advantage, and requesting, agreeing to receive or accepting of an advantage
  • create a discrete offence of bribery of a foreign public official
  • create a new offence of failure by a commercial organisation to prevent a bribe being paid for or on its behalf (it will be a defence if the organisation has adequate procedures in place to prevent bribery
  • replace the fragmented and complex offences at common law and in the Prevention of Corruption Acts 1889-1916
  • require the Secretary of State to publish guidance about procedures that relevant commercial organisations can put in place to prevent bribery on their behalf
  • help tackle the threat that bribery poses to economic progress and development around the world.

The Ministry of Justice published updated procedure guidance on 30th March 2011 that can be put into place by commercial organisations. The report advises that an organisation can form a case against the offence of failing to prevent bribery providing that they can prove adequate procedures are in place in the organisation. This is under section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010.

The guidance sets out six principles that will assist commercial organisations with planning, implementing, monitoring and reviewing their business to ensure it is bribery free.

The principles are:

  1. Proportionate procedures
  2. Top level commitment
  3. Risk assessment
  4. Due diligence
  5. Communication
  6. Monitoring and Review

After each principle there are suggested practical guidelines to help your organisation address them. This designates control to the organisations to review their business and undertake the relevant risk assessments to determine whether or not their procedures are sufficiently robust. If your organisation does not meet the required standard, you are advised to implement anti-bribery procedures as soon as possible.

The guidance presents a risk based approach to adopting the sufficient procedures and acknowledges that different procedures will suit different organisations depending on

  • size of the company
  • markets in which the business operates in
  • the nature of the company’s business partners and transactions.

If you are flummoxed with your obligations under this new act or are having difficulties with any aspect of your bids and tenders, Win That Bid is simply a phone call away.

Filed Under: Checklist, Policies, PQQ, PQQs, Procurement, Tender Writing, Tenders, Top Tips, Win That Bid · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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