Background
Our client, an international organisation that supplies products to the healthcare sector, had a competent bid manager in place and an existing tender response process. However the scale of the tenders the company was responding to meant that it sought additional specialist support in the preparation and submission of bids. The company was keen to improve its tender submissions and “raise them to the next level” by presenting them in a way that really engaged with buyers.
Challenges
In late 2017, our client was required to respond to a large scale tender, with an imminent deadline. In addition to the volume and scale of responses required in this tender, a key challenge was that there were multiple contributors to the bid team which meant that language and terminology were not always consistent. Numerous “voices” could be “heard” through the initial versions of the draft responses.
Implementation
As per our agreed approach the client’s bid manager liaised with her internal departments to assign respective areas of the bid completion to the specialist departments that needed to contribute. Our brief was to assist in refining this content and present it in such a way that it engaged the buyers.
Our writer was also briefed to ensure that the bid reflected one voice by ensuring consistency in terminology, structure, and general narrative.
Whilst the client’s bid manager liaised with her internal colleagues to keep the project on track our writer advised on gaps in the content which needed to be provided, in order to fully meet with the buyers requirements and objectives.
Techniques used by our writer included using the buyers’ language to show understanding and ensuring that all responses could be easily understood and were supported by visuals where appropriate.
As this was a large scale bid with numerous questions requiring very detailed responses, our ability to use images made the document easier for the buyers and evaluators to read and understand. This enabled the buyers to easily identify what our client was offering and how it could deliver the products specified.
Part of our agreed approach was the inclusion of an independent Buyer’s QA (Quality Assurance) stage, which included a review of the proposed submission by another member of our team (a former public sector procurement manager). This provided the bid with a review from the perspective of a buyer, proof reading with a fresh pair of eyes, which enabled the all-important finishing touches to be put to the bid.
Result
Not only did our client win the tender but the company also reported to us that it felt it was the best bid they had ever submitted!
Summary
By working with our client to carefully assign different responsibilities to this large-scale bid (including bid management, content sourcing, drafting and refinement at agreed stages, and buyer’s QA), we were able to meet our brief of adding value to the responses and really engaging with the buyers.