what is tendering Archives - Tender Consultants

Tendering: definition and how it works

John Hudson — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 09:00:08 +0000

Tendering: definition and how it works

What is tendering?

The tendering process is where a buyer, in need of goods/services, issues an invitation called a Request for Tender (RFT) to suppliers. Suppliers will then submit a proposal/tender to provide the goods/services. Finally, the supplier will be chosen by the buyer!

Tendering vs bidding?

What’s the difference between tendering and bidding? They’re the same! The term ‘tender’ is most commonly used in the UK, while ‘bid’ is used most readily in the US.

The Tendering Process

Opportunity advertised by the buyer
Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) – If a closed tender, a PQQ is issued to identify suitable suppliers, who will then proceed to the ITT stage.
Invitation to Tender (ITT) – If an open tender, the process begins here for any suppliers.
Evaluation of Tender Submissions – Once all the tenders have been received, they are evaluated against criteria and how they suit the buyer’s needs.
Award of Contract – Now that a supplier has been selected, they are awarded the contract and the work can begin!

What’s an RFT?

An RFT (Request for Tender) is released by the buyer to suppliers, outlining their demands and the terms and conditions of the contract. This includes:

Tender conditions – including how to respond to the tender.
Tender form – details needed from the supplier in their response.
Scope – required details from the supplier regarding their goods/services provided.
Evaluation criteria – how the buyer will evaluate responses.
Conditions of the contract – details of the legal contract if awarded.

Note: it is vital to follow the buyer’s criteria to a T!

Other tendering methods

The term ‘tender’ can confuse those not familiar with its processes as it is often commonly used to refer to the RFT, Request for Quote (RFQ), Request for Proposal (RFP) and Request for Information (RFI). However, these terms can also vary in terms of the documents required from the supplier and the outcome of the request. For example, an RFI is simply the process of gathering information from suppliers regarding their goods/services. However, an RFQ is the process of suppliers submitting quotes for their goods/services.

Who can tender?

Anyone! Many different businesses in various sectors, of various sizes tender for opportunities. In short, the public and private sectors, including non-profits, use the tendering process.

Tendering is most common in these industries, though it is not limited to only these:

Tendering is mostly used by:

Government
Council
Education
NHS
Non-profits
Various private-sector businesses

Advantages of tendering!

Tendering can benefit suppliers (vendors) and buyers alike! Here are just a few top benefits of tendering:

Buyers

Competitive tendering allows the buyer to get the best value for money possible, by selecting the supplier with the most advantageous price.
Tendering has many stages to ensure the supplier chosen has been sufficiently screened in terms of reliability. This decreases the risk for the buyer!
Depending on the style of tendering (open vs closed), there is usually a fair and balanced tendering process when selecting a supplier.

Suppliers

Visibility – making your reputation known to buyers by building a portfolio of successful relationships with other buyers can increase your long-term financial stability.
Expansion – similar to increasing your visibility, expand your business by developing a portfolio of successful relationships with buyers to expose your business to new opportunities.

Our services include:

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.

Contact us:

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!

Discover Elite

Upgrading to Discover Elite can optimise your tendering efforts!

Our two new time-saving tools can improve competitor awareness and success rate when bidding for a contract:

The Ultimate Time Save Package (for those on the go!)

Five tender breakdowns per month.
Annual subscription to two sector-specific portals.
Dedicated account manager.

The Become a Pre-Bid Master package

All of the above.
Seven tender breakdowns per month.
Bid Strategy delivered by a Senior Bid Manager (minimum five years experience). Our Global Bid Director will manage the bid strategy.

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!

Find more helpful tips and advice in our blogs. We cover topics including:

The post Tendering: definition and how it works appeared first on Tender Consultants.

Bid Specialists – Helping to Grow Your Business Through Tendering

Ben Glaister — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 12:43:20 +0000

How Can Bid Specialists Help Your Business Grow?

Last updated: Jun 7, 2022 @ 4:15 pm

The Importance of Tendering.

Tendering helps prevent economic restrictions, whether directly/government imposed, or arising from a general lack of means, ultimately contribute to conflict. As individuals and states find themselves more financially restricted, they stop buying from one another, sales and demand drop, prosperity slows and growth decreases, further compounding the vicious cycle of economic restriction and poverty.

Naturally, tensions rise, relations deteriorate and alliances crumble.

Procurement is essential.

In short, as any bid specialist will tell you, procurement is essential. Having a structured tender process in place for purchasing goods/services with clear rules, fair evaluations and open procedures are vital to prevent this from happening again.

These processes are designed to ensure equality of opportunity for suppliers, as well as efficient spending and the best value for money for buyers.

Overall, the logic is that this will help bring about a smooth system of trade, promote good financial relationships, help businesses grow, and boost prosperity.

And that’s exactly what the tendering and procurement procedure is designed to do.

What is tendering?

Tendering is the process of bidding for a contract to deliver work or goods. Purchasing organisations – typically in the public sector, when looking to procure goods or services, will publish a contract notice.

This will contain amongst other things, a specification detailing the list of goods/services they require, along with specific price-related and technical questions for potential suppliers to answer.

This allows the buyer to do a fair and objective assessment of suppliers tendering for contracts, to understand which of them will be able to provide the best balance between quality and cost – or as bid specialists say – the “most economically advantageous tender”, or MEAT.

This process helps to ensure that buyers procure services in an objective way that:

Precludes discrimination, nepotism and favouritism.
Ensures efficiency in the spending of public money.
Allows even small suppliers the chance to prove their worth, win work and expand.
Ensures they get the most they possibly can for their money.

How can tendering help a buyer’s business grow?

As any Bid Specialist will tell you, tendering is now the most common way for large organisations (especially those in the public sector) to spend money on goods and services. It allows purchasing organisations to organise and understand their outgoings for potentially the next decade.

With their future outgoings largely structured, managed and organised in a viable way, purchasing organisations are then free to organise their growth and expansion plans around this, facilitating a sustainable development/increase of their activities.

In short, engaging in procurement and tendering gives buyers an overview of structured, precise and sustainable future outgoings in order to better plan strategic moves and decisions, increasing their ability to grow, create employment and increase turnover.

Moreover, the tendering process also provides buyers with the opportunity to ask potential suppliers about their ability to add the following values to their organisation.

Indeed, in many public sector bids, there will be an added value section for suppliers to complete, and as bid specialists, we know that this is a vital part.

Added value is what a supplier will offer to go over and above the core requirements of the buyer. These include:

The goods
The people
The services
The procedures

In short, this adds a further element of competition to a bid, where suppliers need to showcase their ability to bring something extra to the table in order to win the work.

This will help purchasing organisations to ensure they get suppliers who will go above and beyond to provide the best service, will spend their money most effectively and will add real value, thereby facilitating the growth and development of the purchasing organisation.

How can tendering help suppliers’ businesses grow?

The criticism that the UK is dominated by a collective of large corporations who place a monopoly on the market, force out competition and increase prices, is often heard. Below is a list of points on how the tendering process helps businesses grow.

To all intents and purposes, it does away with the potential advantage that large companies may have when bidding for work.
Tendering provides a neutral, structured and objective set of criteria for the evaluation of potential suppliers, precluding the potential advantage larger companies may have in terms of reputation or turnover. Rather, suppliers are assessed purely on their responses to the technical and financial criteria of each bid.
Bigger suppliers do not necessarily have the advantage you might automatically think they do, in the tendering process.
Many smaller suppliers have fewer overheads and are able to quote less for each job. We have seen many smaller suppliers with regular, loyal customers, established relationships, solid local connections and good references thanks to their size and scope.
Smaller suppliers are able to pay closer attention to the requirements of a bid and craft a good response, rather than the generic responses to tenders that are often churned out by larger corporations.

Often, this proves to be a winning combination.

Meeting thresholds.

In short, tendering provides a structured, fair and neutral way of assessing supplier responses that don’t leave room in the assessment for the consideration that anything that might traditionally have been thought of as a commercial advantage for large companies i.e. their size and reputation.

Whilst smaller suppliers will often still have to meet minimum thresholds: This can include the following:

Insurance
Capacity
Turnover

Tendering provides an objective framework and neutral criteria whereby smaller suppliers are assessed on a completely level playing field with their larger competitors, whose perceived “advantages” count for little in the evaluation. This helps small business grow, expand and prosper.

Winning work through tendering, as with buyers, helps give suppliers a definitive overview of their future outgoings, required manpower, and income. This helps the organisation manage their cash flow better, make more informed strategic decisions and gives them the security of regular income for the length of a contract.

This allows them to increase their capacity, expand, reach new markets and benefit from an influx of skills and experience by creating jobs, which in turn creates further business and prosperity. In short, tendering helps to create and perpetuate a vital cycle of growth and prosperity.

Bid Specialist Support:

If you’re confused about the tendering process and would like to understand more, check out Tender VLE, our, free, online, virtual learning environment for all things tendering and procurement related. If you’d like to understand even more about the process, about the value tendering can add to your organisation, about how you might win more work or procure more effectively, speak to our Bid Writers today.

Find more helpful tips and advice in our blogs. We cover topics including:

The post Bid Specialists – Helping to Grow Your Business Through Tendering appeared first on Tender Consultants.