Part 2 Tendering for the Public Sector

The information to include with your proposal can be requested in a pre qualification questionnaire (often you will have to go to a portal and fill these in) or the tender itself and will include some or all of the information shown

Tip: Most of this information is generic that you know today so start drafting ‘it’.

General Information normally needed:

Company and organisational details:
Business contact addresses and telephone numbers
Management and business structure (Organogram in PowerPoint if necessary)
Whether part of a group structure etc.

Financial Information

If you are registered for VAT the details (always check if they expect your bid to be inclusive of VAT I have be caught on this before),
You will be asked for three years audited accounts as a rule. If you are a small organisation without three years financial accounts, you can still apply but state why these accounts are not available (Give provisional accounts if you have them or forecasts if you are starting up) – if your turnover is below the threshold for auditing state this as the reason.
As well as financial viability they use this often as an indicator of the size of the contract to turnover ratio – that is if your turnover is around £100K and you are bidding for a contract of £200K they may be uncomfortable so you might want to qualify this opportunity out (can do ‘it as practice though so not all wasted)

You will always need to provide proof of an acceptable level of public liability insurance and where appropriate other necessary insurances (policy numbers will be needed). This is quite important even for consultants – we had to get specific insurance recently for psychological testing to protect us from being sued if our clients used our assessments to, say, to not offer a job or second interview!! So get insured!

Provide two independent referees from whom references may be sought for any relevant assignments or projects completed within the last three years - these will be assignments or a similar scale or content. References can be acquired from previous customers, bankers or business information companies – you can get these organised well before needed.

Now we start focusing on the specifics of how your organisation matches up to the requirement

The first step is to craft your understanding of the Business Needs into the tender – showing you understand the requirement and how ‘you’ uniquely are able to satisfy them if you are selected (your unique selling proposition)

• Satisfy the actual need of your potential customer not the need that you perceive your customer to have – restate the problem in the tender and how you understand it.
• Talk about their needs and how you can solve their problems
• Show you are aware of their needs, concerns, developments and pressures.
• Take into account the wider business goals of the assignment – place your work in context.
• Are there clear outputs and outcomes? Put forward your proposal on how these can be achieved – make sure your address all their expected outcomes. (Even if you doubt whether an outcome can be delivered by their proposed approach state it can be achieved)
• Provide clear definition of the goods and services to be provided and responsibilities for delivery.
• Demonstrate sound business knowledge of what can and cannot be compromised in the proposal – this is a restatement of your understanding of the business requirement
• Be flexible and willing to tailor a product or service to meet specific customer needs – this goes without saying.
• Show how you offer high quality personal levels of service
• Show how you can respond quickly to changing requirements – with minimal cost consequences.
• Overall avoid ambiguity at the initial tender stage – use active voice avoid ‘caveats’ (raises doubts)

Key Points: Understanding of requirement, deliverables, your unique selling proposition, match to requirement – How you solve this problem.

Next time: showing innovation and that you can deliver the project


Royston

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