06/01/2020
COVID-19 - Accelerating a Revolution in Bid Management:
This COVID-19 period has been tragic, traumatic and hugely difficult for many individuals and businesses, but has at least some positives - it is accelerating a revolution in ways of working for bid teams.
Since our company was formed, we have always aimed to be ‘one step ahead’ in terms of what it takes to win bids. All major companies have strong bid processes, based on a small number of common bid management methodologies and associated training. When down to the last three bidders in a competition, all three will be using broadly these same ‘industry standard’ methodologies. To achieve our exceptionally high win-rate, we have always been asking ‘what’s the smart thing to do at this stage of the procurement cycle’, and what does our client need to be doing on top of this ‘industry standard’ in order to beat the second and third placed bidders who are applying very similar bid management methods.
Over the past 17 years we have therefore found the winning edge by applying ‘smarter than industry standard’ approaches - driving initiatives in bid responses in areas such as using white papers, corporate social responsibility, SME agendas, app-enablement, collaborative working, and cyber-security.
There are further areas that we are currently enabling our clients to beat the ‘industry standard’, but the smarter ways of working arising from COVID-19 are certainly spawning new approaches that we will be helping our clients to benefit from.
We at BidPartners were already strong advocates of smart ways of working; whilst we have our own office facilities (great for management strategy meetings, brainstorming around the whiteboard, and off-site sessions with clients), we were already fully set up for secure on-line remote working from home or clients offices. By running bids with client consortia spread across multiple countries/continents we had already driven structured ways of joint bid working. Bids always have tight timescales and the time needs to be used cleverly. Good pre-bid preparation, clear briefings and templates, firm bid management timetables with accurate predictions for task durations, and a highly structured review/fix/improve process all lends itself well to the discipline required to manage large teams remotely.
The COVID-19 situation drove an immediate move to remote working; some clients being better prepared than others. Our experience of working one-to-one with our clients’ solution engineers and subject matter experts meant that we knew what briefings and support they would need when working remotely.
We have now worked in multiple bids across different sectors in the current COVID-19 environment. These bids have related to facilities management, financial services, defence, transport, telecoms and health. Across all these public and private sector organisations that these opportunities interact with, the working processes have in many cases become more efficient than they were previously. We no-longer see valuable bid time wasted on unnecessary travel. Public Sector end-clients are working out innovative ways of running data rooms and dialogue sessions. Process flow on bid reviews and author feedback now follows the efficient cycle we have been encouraging for years. People working at the times that suit them (fitting with their own issues such as home-schooling and childcare) are delivering genuine outcome-based high-quality results. Many of the collaborative working processes that people have claimed to have had, are actually being used!
There are new pitfalls to be aware of – it has become easy for managers in our clients’ organisations to fill their days with back-to-back on-line meetings, leaving very little thinking/doing time in-between and risking new levels of mental stress that the traditional coffee-breaks, travel between meetings, lunch-breaks, and off-line chat would usually alleviate. We are guiding our clients to help them manage and plan the ‘drumbeat’ of bids to address that.
Bidding will never return to the pre-COVID-19 ways of working. For sure face-to-face meetings will return, but the efficiency gains we are achieving on bids at present will mean that any company that does not embrace this new smarter way of organising and managing bid responses will be left behind. The benefits at the bid stage will flow into improvements in managing transitions and delivery phases too. Whilst COVID-19 has clearly had a terrible impact on many individuals, families and economies, there are lessons we can learn which will implement to enable our clients to bid smarter in the future.
