FORMAL TENDERING - A NECESSARY EVIL?

If this is how your organisation views formal procurement, you need to contact AFM Consulting urgently! We will provide additional Expertise, Focus, Vision and Innovation working in partnership to supplement your in-house capability.

The fierce competition within the professional services sector and the increasing involvement of purchasing professionals in decision making when selecting preferred/approved suppliers of services has increased the formalisation of the procurement process. 

Increasingly formal Requests for Information (RFIs), Pre-Qualification Questionnaires (PQQs), Invitations to Tender (ITTs) and Statements Of Requirements (SoRs) are issued by organisations seeking professional services across all business sectors – formal procurement has been commonplace in the Public Sector for many years. As a result, a relatively small number of large suppliers have gained extensive experience of the formalities of structured procurement exercises.

This formal process can place some professional services suppliers at an immediate disadvantage; sophisticated, formal responses are required to what are, in many cases, ambiguous questions and/or statements of requirements. Inevitably the responses will be included, with disparate weightings, in the evaluation model. It is critical therefore, that the team responsible for preparing the responses completely understand how purchasing professionals think and can exceed evaluation requirements.

Very few Services suppliers employ sufficient full-time, experienced professionals to respond to complex, formal procurements; their ‘normal’ alternative is to second a Director or senior Business Development person to prepare the response. In a Services sales environment taking either of the above away from their mainstream tasks will result in loss of business effectiveness. There is also no guarantee that there is the required level of understanding of the purchaser’s intentions to interpret the documents effectively and to demonstrate the necessary creativity, innovation and vision in proposing the solution. This can result in perfectly capable Services Suppliers being eliminated early in the tendering/selection process.

We have an impressive record of success, working in partnership with in-house Stakeholders and Bid Teams, in RFI/PQQ to ITT, tender to presentation and presentation to contract-award ratios.

AFM Consulting provides consultancy support on either a Time or Materials basis or will quote a Fixed Price for the development of a complete response; please emailinfo@afmconsulting.net with your requirements.