ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

Tendering - Plan ahead

Updated on June 10, 2015

"Strategic planning is worthless - unless there is a strategic vision"

John Naisbitt


Does your business plan for its tenders?

Do you have tender strategies in place?

See results

Tendering: A journey

The tender process does not start when the request for tender (RFT) hits your inbox. By then, it’s often too late to react and submit a coherent and robust response. The successful business is one that plans ahead. When starting your enterprise you no doubt wrote a comprehensive business plan. Now is the time to dust it off and revisit it to help you with the first step in the tender process.

Know where you are headed

It is very important that, as an organisation, you are all agreed on the direction that your business is headed. What is it that you are trying to achieve? It all comes back to the relationship between your Vision and Mission statements. Your Vision is your goal of where you want to be in the future; your mission describes your present state and defines what you do, who for and how. The process I am talking about now is the road map of how you get from one to the other. To be sure about strategy execution, some companies will use a tool such as the Balanced Scorecard. While it is a method of measuring performance, the initial workshops developing the company strategy map forces participants to focus sharply on their objectives and the initiatives needed to reach them. Tendering becomes one of the strategies to achieve your goals.

Building relationships

Knowing the road you want to take gives you the opportunity to plan your itinerary; how many legs there are to the journey, where you want to stop along the way and who you turn to for help. Building the right relationships is a powerful tool. If you have identified who you would like to do work for then get to know them and, just as importantly, get them to know you. Find out what they want and need and take steps to grow your business in that direction. Take the time also to build relationships with organisations and individuals who can help you. Maybe they have capabilities you don’t and would be willing to partner with you on certain jobs. Employment Services providers, for example, will often work with Registered Training Organisations to help their clients gain vocational skills and qualifications. Or perhaps you can link with another party that has contacts that can help you in your role. In a recent government tender for the provision of Disability Employment Services, one critical requirement was to show how the tenderer would advocate the benefits of hiring someone with disability. One successful organisation was able to build relationships with a service club, health providers and business groups to demonstrate their involvement in the local community. Whatever the reason, having a network of relationships in place prior to release of the RFT will ease the stress at writing time and demonstrate your commitment to the task ahead.

Research

Understanding your market is an integral part of preparing a successful tender response. Potential clients, particularly government agencies, want to know what you know about the task at hand and the product users. Know all there is to know about your potential clients and their business. Visit their website; you can find out a great deal about what makes a company tick by looking at their vision, mission and values. See if you can find their annual report or company newsletters, these are often a good way of finding out what is important to them. If you are looking at targeting a specific service or product then research your competitors. Who are they, where are they and what do they do? Use this knowledge to develop a point of difference. Perhaps you are interested in moving to a particular location. Once again get to know the area. Who lives there, what do they do, what do they earn, what is it that the area needs most? Find out what businesses are in the area that might need you and what organisations are around that might be able to help you. Market intelligence is one of your most powerful tools but make sure you continually revisit it; it goes out of date very quickly.

Build Capability and Capacity

By knowing your potential clients you can start to get an understanding of the capabilities they are looking for. This allows you the opportunity, before the RFT is released, to gain the skills and knowledge you need to submit a competitive response. This can be achieved by either training your existing staff or recruiting suitable new employees. Recruitment has the added bonus of new staff possibly bringing with them a good reputation and contacts in the industry. You may need to purchase different software or equipment; doing this early allows you to gain proficiency and experience and demonstrates your commitment. One question often asked in an RFT is ‘how will your organisation cope with the extra workload. Do you have the capacity to fulfil your existing contracts and ours at the same time?’ By asking yourself this question early you can consider your options and put strategies in place. Recruiting people in anticipation is a risky business that causes many CFOs to have nightmares. This is where the relationships you have built may come in handy; having ties with a labour hire company could give you a ready workforce on tap. Perhaps this is an opportunity to demonstrate your innovative side and introduce new techniques with greater productivity. Addressing capability and capacity early will help mitigate the risks involved with hurried and poorly thought out solutions.

In Short...

I cannot stress enough the importance of proper planning when approaching the business of tendering. As I have stated in other hubs, think of it in terms of project management. Create a plan, assign someone to manage it and ensure that every stakeholder in your organisation accepts ownership.

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)