The Tender Ready Programme
Tendering can be quite daunting, especially if you have never responded or even seen what a tender looks like.
The first stages of tendering are crucial in ensuring that you get it right, and this is part of what we call being “Tender Ready”.
Indeed, before you even decide on a contract to bid for, there are a few things that you can have prepared in advance that will make your life much easier when it comes to developing tenders.
We have provided our Top 4 things that you need to consider when being Tender Ready:
1 – Experience & Technical Capabilities
Firstly, buyers need to see the past experience of your delivery.
To provide the buyer with confidence in your ability to undergo the work involved, you need to demonstrate you can actually deliver the work you’re bidding for, by providing thorough, detailed and robust examples of where you have delivered similar work in the past.
Be organised and prepare at least three good case studies for each service you offer, detailing the timescale and value, achievements, outcomes, challenges and lessons learned.
2 – Policies & Procedures
Secondly, make sure your organisation possesses the relevant policies and procedures, in which you actively implement and use every single day. This may vary depending on the sector, but the most important ones consist of the following:
- Health and Safety policy
- Equality and Diversity policy
- Quality Policy
- Environmental Policy
- Customer Service / Complaints policy etc.
For more information about policies and procedures, click here to visit Tender VLE.
3 – Organisational Structure
Thirdly, we recommend you have a clear team structure with a chain of command, clearly defined roles and responsibilities and deputising and reporting procedures.
Using an organogram, or organisation chart can be a useful, simple and visually appealing way of presenting your organisational structure to the buyer that lets them see who does what and who manages each area.
Such information can be backed up by detailed and clear team profiles and CVs. Click here for more information.
4 – Boilerplate Responses & Generic Content
Fourthly, it is a great idea to have a bank of pre-prepared “boilerplate responses” – templates for responses to questions or topics which often come up, or which can be reasonably anticipated.
These save you precious time and resources, meaning your work on a given response might only be a few tweaks here and there to tailor it to the question being asked, allowing you to divert your energies to more specific, technical and in-depth questions.
Being Tender Ready involves demonstrating to buyers that you understand how your organisation operates, what it is you offer, your resources, experience and your ethos.
It’s hard to convince a buyer to choose you if it looks like you yourself don’t know what you’re talking about and you have multiple inconsistencies across your brand, as well as having little to no evidence of previous delivery.
Getting the necessary information together and producing high-quality literature that is detailed and clear is a mammoth task, but an important first step.
Here at Tender Consultants, we are here to help you SUCCEED.
If you’re feeling confused by the tendering process, daunted, or are needing that all important first step in the right direction, then our Tender Ready service is the one for you!
What is the Tender Ready programme?
Our Tender Ready service ensures that you have winning resources in place when you begin bidding for contracts.
The service includes:
- Professional Tender Portfolio development.
- Basic tender knowledge support.
- Expert advice regarding the opportunities that you should be bidding for based on your companies economic financial standing.
- Content production of the most frequently requested tender documentation including company policies, team profiles and internal procedures.
- Case study development and tender response advice.
- Once this content is developed you are ready to tender! But our bid support doesn’t end there. As part of the Tender Ready service, you will also be entitled to a review of your first two bids OR our tender experts will write your first bid on your behalf, using the documents we have created.
Get in touch today and start your tender journey.
Find more helpful tips and advice in our blogs. We cover topics including: