With the UK public sector’s annual spend of £350bn on things ranging from app development to zoo facilities management, all organisations should be bidding for these opportunities. It can seem intimidating if you have no experience, but there are ways you can position yourself early for success. As the points below demonstrate, if you wait until a tender is released
Leaving the EU provided the UK with the responsibility and opportunity to overhaul the public procurement regulations. The Procurement Bill is intended to shake up how the public sector procures its strategic goods and services, making it quicker, simpler, and more transparent. The wide-ranging changes encompass new procurement processes, greater transparency, a renewed focus on social outcomes, supply chain engagement,
The first truth of bidding is that it takes time. Even for moderately simple tenders, putting a high-quality bid submission together requires a sustained, concentrated effort, co-ordination between different parts of the business, and a lot of resource management. A typical tender submission lasts around 4-6 weeks which is theoretically plenty of time to put together a coherent and compelling
Understanding how to bid for a new contract can spell the difference between success and failure, says David Gray, managing director, shared his thoughts in a recent article in Growing Business Intelligence. 1. Be selective SMEs can waste a lot of time and effort on bidding for contracts if they don’t know what they are doing. A lot of SMEs
Following the challenges of Brexit and COVID-19, we are now seeing increasing energy and fuel prices, a cost-of-living crisis and the war in Ukraine all impacting supply chains, labour markets and material costs. With such uncertainty causing extreme market volatility, how can we commit to long-term pricing in our bids and tenders? Start upstream – educate your clients before they
Organisations that have a track record of delivering winning bids usually do not wait until the PQQ or tender first appears to start their work on a bid. In public sector bidding, it is good to check if the client has issued a Prior Information Notice (PIN). This will contain some useful information and a contact for further questions. It
If you want to grow by driving your performance and increasing your competitive advantage, propelling your business towards sustained success, maybe you should be looking at transforming your bidding activities. Bidding is the life blood for many businesses, ensuring they retain their current clients as well as bringing in new business. For optimal results, the whole business needs to work
Almost all organisations have felt the pain of spending considerable time and effort tendering for an important public sector contract and then being told that the bid was ultimately unsuccessful. In most instances, there will be legitimate reasons for a bid failing but what should a bidder do if they believe that the procurement process was unfair and want to
Bid teams often require opportunities to reflect and refresh on updated training content that allows them to directly apply these into future bids. On occasion there are significant barriers to implementing bid training such as: – The bid team being too busy to attend training as it can take resource away from completing important bids – Differing levels of experience
Managing internal operations is critical in keeping synergy within a team involved in the bidding process. How can a bidding team improve its process? Have you relied purely on the subject matter experts and ignored a period of time for feedback and learning opportunities? It is crucial that time for feedback is scheduled, as neglecting this may result in repetition