Many of Tender Victory’s clients are smaller businesses and our bid writers often take on the various bid team roles such as leading, writing, managing and administering the bid to support the client in bringing it altogether. We provide a full service from the download of the documents right through to the submission of the final bid, working with a nominated person in the bidding company (often a senior manager or director), who either provide the majority of the information themselves, or receive and manage all the contributions needed from their staff.
In addition to our work with SMEs, as tender experts, we are often called in by larger organisations to complement their bid teams and resources and assist with large-scale complex bids.
Managing multiple contributors and subject matter experts
With larger clients and where there are multiple bidding organisations, we adapt our approach. One of the key challenges when writing a bid is managing the input and contributions from a wide range of subject matter experts from different teams. Generally, the larger the company, the more people there are to manage within the bid team; which requires additional strategies to ensure the bid is managed effectively.
We approach this is by splitting the bid management, administration and writing roles. Ensuring each contributor knows what is needed, by when and in what format to facilitate effective bid management including liaising with the buyer, ensuring that the bid is compliant, monitoring clarifications and bid updates and actually writing the responses. If the bid is substantial, having a team solely focusing on drafting the responses ensures that the project management and administration elements can be managed by a separate person or people.
Key to managing bid and content contributions from disparate companies and departments is bringing everyone together at the bid kick off meeting – the first meeting for the team. This should be undertaken as soon as possible once the documentation has arrived, and input from this meeting may contribute to the bid / no bid decision and thereafter the bid strategy.
Managing multiple bidding options
Managing the bid is even more complex where there are multiple bidding options and the buying organisation is yet to determine which one they will elect (this may sometimes be administered by running the tender in lots, so the evaluation outcome informs the option selected). A bid manager must ensure that progress is made as well as providing ample opportunity to explore and manage the possibilities and options when bidding.
Examples of multiple bidding options (for a single tender) might be as follows:
- Direct bid as lead bidder – using third party suppliers/sub-contractors to meet the full contract requirements
- Consortium – establishing a formal approach to bidding collaboratively with other partners
- Bidding as a supplier or sub-contractor to another firm’s direct lead bid (your organisation becomes the third party). This option might also be applied with a number of lead bidders.
When a client’s bidding strategy is via direct bid as well as bidding with a third party (or third parties) for the same opportunity, the bid team needs to work and liaise with companies who may be bidding as lead bidder (with our client as third party contributor) to provide information for only certain sections of the bid. This is in addition to preparing bid responses for the client’s direct submission.
Case study: A Tender Victory client was submitting several bids for the same opportunity. We were working with a smaller company under a large corporate umbrella, and their bidding strategy was somewhat dependent on the Buyer’s intentions for the opportunity (which weren’t very clear). We prepared information and responses for three bids whilst the client was deciding how to proceed (awaiting clarity from the Buyer): one as a direct bid from the company and two bids as subcontractor to two different companies.
This was a complex, changing situation (particularly since the Buyer’s clarifications were not always as illuminating as they perhaps intended them to be) so, as bid writers and managers, we were tasked with bringing together all the information in a flexible way to enable it to work for whichever bidding option would finally be chosen.
On a project such as this our job as bid writers includes articulating and documenting the details of the contract delivery; communicating these clearly, utilising the documentation which was available and identifying and capturing the important information to draft additional content for possible use. We also ensure that our clients are kept on track (staying abreast of meetings with potential subcontractor bid teams and also managing the information flow internally) so we can make progress with the bid development. When dealing with so many, often competing, factors and options changing almost daily, we utilise structures and systems including call schedules, meeting agendas, tracker spreadsheets and version control in documents – as these are critical for the team to remain on track.
As can often happen with complex opportunities, there may be legal complexities, commercial factors and logistical challenges involved for the client to decide which bidding approach to adopt. On the example mentioned here, the decision as to the final bidding strategy wasn’t made until very late in the process. This meant a changing direction and uncertain environment for the bid team, which we managed through preparation, regular meetings with the client and tried and tested bid development tools.
Our top tips for managing complex bids with multiple organisations:
- Be prepared: document as much of your bid management and bid writing processes and procedures as possible (from the very start) so that everyone is working to an agreed methodology across variations of the bid.
- Ensure your bid library is up to date as far as possible – having up to date standard company documents (such as policies and certificates) readily available and easy to draw upon can save a lot of time and stress.
- Set up a regular meeting schedule and agree communication channels so each team member is working with the latest information – especially when decisions could change at speed and divert the direction of the bid(s).
If your organisation needs help managing complex bids, please do contact us so we can discuss how we can support with bid management and / or bid writing services, delivered by our highly experienced experts.