Navigating Your Way Through the Tender Maze: A Guide
Navigating Your Way Through the Tender Maze: A Guide
Navigating your way through the tender maze can be tricky for even the most experienced tender writers. Tendering is an ever-changing landscape with new rules and regulations to abide by, ensuring that your tender response is fully compliant.
In this blog, we will cover all the ways you can navigate the tendering landscape to ensure ultimate success. This includes the best tendering preparation methods, tender management, difficult terms in tendering and where to find help with your tender.
What is a Tender?
A tender is an offer, proposal or bid made by one party to another in response to a request for goods or services. A tender is usually used in the context of government procurement for the purchase of goods and services and in large business-to-business transactions.
Tendering Terms
Understanding basic procurement terminology can be extremely beneficial for all those wishing to tender in the UK. However, if you have never tendered before or are confused by UK and US tendering terms, it can make navigating the tender maze much more difficult.
Familiarise yourself with the relevant terminology before beginning to tender so you don’t get caught out!
Top 5 Tender Preparation Practices
Research the Tender
Understanding the requirements of the tender document is essential. It is important to familiarise yourself with the terms and conditions, specifications, and rules of the tender so that you can prepare a compliant bid.
Plan and Develop Your Bid Response
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is key when responding to a tender. You should create a plan that clearly outlines how you are going to respond to the tender’s criteria and requirements.
Be Clear and Specific
Provide clear and specific information as to how your organisation can meet the needs of the tenderer, detailing any relevant experience and expertise.
Consider Timing
When responding to a tender it is important to allow yourself enough time to submit a complete and accurate bid on time. Make sure to adhere to the submission deadlines and don’t leave anything to the last minute.
Seek Expert Advice
If you are unfamiliar with tendering process, it can be beneficial to seek expert advice. Professional advisers can help you ensure that your bid documentation meets the standards of the buyer and that all the correct information is included.
Best Practices for Tender Management
Start with a plan
When you are writing a tender, it is important to begin with a plan. Record key elements including timelines, milestones and deadlines, supply chain objectives, plan for evaluation and selection, and any other considerations. Think about what you want to achieve in completing the tender and structure your process and plans accordingly.
Use the right language
Tender writers must be very familiar with the language of the procurement process to ensure that their bids are written accurately and compliantly with the requirements of the solicitation. To ensure that all stakeholders can understand the content of the tender, use clear, concise language and avoid using unfamiliar words or terms.
Research and assess the competition
It is important to be aware of the competition when writing and submitting bids, as you will need to be aware of their capabilities and capacity to offer a better deal. Gather as much information about the competition as possible and use this to inform your pricing structure and value-adding capabilities.
Identify risks and develop strategies to address them
There are many risks associated with a tender, which must be addressed to ensure that the most competitive bid is chosen. Before submitting your bid, identify any risks and create strategies.
Our Free Learning Resources
If you have any more questions then Tender VLE will have the answers for you.
Join the UK’s first-ever virtual learning environment to offer a range of free tender-related videos. Whether you have years of tendering experience or are starting out from scratch, Tender VLE will have something for you.
Think there’s something missing? If you can’t find the answers you’re looking for, then tell us more about the content you’d like to see!
See something you like? Contact our team for a quick chat and start your Tender VLE journey today.
How we can help!
Tender Writing
Once you’ve found the perfect bid for your business, send it our way. Our Bid Writers can take care of the whole thing for you they’ll even submit it on your behalf. They’ll let you know what they need from you, providing you with a full Tender Writing breakdown.
Tender Ready
Our Tender Ready 4-week programme is perfect for businesses that have never tendered before. A Bid Writer will work with you to ensure you have everything in place to tender successfully. Tender Ready offers your business:
- A 12-month subscription to one Hudson Discover
- Access to Global Bid Directors and Senior Bidding Professionals.
- An Organisation-wide Bid library, including 3 case studies, 5 CVs and policies.
- Additional flexible benefits.
Tender Improvement
If you’ve been tendering but aren’t seeing success from your current efforts, our Tender Improvement package can help. Our Bid Team will assess your previous responses and tender documents. They will work with you to improve for future submissions. This package includes a 12-month subscription to a Hudson Discover portal and additional tendering development services.
Tender Mentor
If you’ve written your tender response and need it double-checked for errors, Tender Mentor can help. A Bid Writer will proofread your work for any inconsistencies, grammar, or spelling mistakes. They will also ensure it’s in line with the specification before you submit it. This is a great way of improving your skills and understanding of how to polish your tender.
Additional support:
Do you only require assistance with PQQs or SQs? We can help!
Submit the relevant information regarding the work you need, and we will provide a quote for the work agreed upon.
We provide support at all levels of the bid writing process, so if you simply need it proofread before you submit it, we can also help with that!
Our other divisions:
Vocal
Wanting to impress a buyer? Our creative content agency Vocal is always on hand to help!
Our Vocal team are never afraid to be heard – we’re a loud bunch!
From micro-businesses to large organisations, we provide ways to make your business stand out from the crowd. We can transform your bid into a professionally designed tender document!
Vocal specialises in:
Alpha
Our online virtual learning environment for Education, Enterprise and Home Learners is currently being used to power our platforms – Tender VLE and Procure VLE (Coming soon).
We believe in learning at your own pace, wherever you are!
