Now that you have a clear bid/no-bid strategy in place and you are keen to progress with applying for the right tenders, that meet with your bid strategy and complement your business’s aims and objectives, you are in a position to organise your bid resources for maximum effectiveness in the tendering process.
Bid team
Understand who your bid team will be. Who will be in charge of receiving the tender notifications, reviewing them and responding to them? We understand often in smaller companies this can sit with the Managing Director or similar.However, larger companies will have dedicated members of their staff to manage bids – perhaps it’s a standalone role for someone or a number of suitable staff members could take it on and share the responsibility together.
Alternatively you can outsource this work to a Tender Consultancy like ours. See our different methods of working here.
Register to receive tender notifications in your inbox
Once you know who is managing the bid process set up tender alert notifications with tender portals, to come into that individual’s inbox.Top tip, we recommend to our clients, that they create a shared tenders@ email address within their organisation for the purpose of tender alerts and notifications. This then provides continued and contingency access to critical tender information, in case the allocated individual is absent or unavailable.
Read our useful blog about how to do this here: https://tendervictory.co.uk/where-to-find-tenders-and-contracts/
(Please note the TED service is no longer relevant for UK based EU contracts, this service has been replaced with: https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Search) , TED remains relevant for UK businesses seeking tender opportunities within Europe.
Bid Library
Begin working on your library of information that would be helpful for future bids and tenders. This should includestandard company information, such as policy documents, accreditation certificates and case studies. You must ensure that all policy and procedure documents are kept up to date. Prepare evidence and information that will contribute to questions on key topics/areas, such as your product/service; business continuity; social value; environmental management; and contract management, to name but a few. We link to another useful blog we have written about being prepared for tendering here, this should help you with preparing what should be in your bid library.
Now you should be ready to press GO! Find a tender you think would be good for you, read the documentation and start your submission!
We recommend you look through our entire blog library for other useful tips and posts about topics such as procurement terminology, guidance on tricky questions, ensuring you submit correctly, etc.
If you need guidance, support or training on any aspects of public sector tendering, please do get in touch, we would be happy to discuss with you how we can help.