Submitted by: Fiona Campbell

Small and medium-sized businesses can benefit from working with public sector bodies. However, your chances of entering the winning bid depend entirely on your tender response. So how can you prepare the perfect response and ensure that yours is the winning bid? Read on to find out.

Bidding for a public tender is not something any business should do lightly. There are a number of factors to be considered before responding to the tender, including assessing the aims of the business, judging how you qualify to make the bid and keeping in mind present market conditions.

It is important that you make your bid without being intimidated by the threat of larger companies. Procurement laws in the UK are such that they support free and fair competition between big corporates and small and medium-sized organisations. Small companies have as good a chance of winning the tender as the multinational company and, by preparing a compliant tender response, you can beat the competition regardless of their size.

The response must be timely and appropriate. More importantly, you must make sure you meet the requirements outlined in the tender. This can only be done through careful study of the tender and by clearly understanding the terms of the initial tender announcement. The announcement is your key to preparing a response which will exceed the expectations of the awarding authority.

You must work with a core team of responsible professionals from your office to complete the reply and arrive at the most accurate and attractive response. To understand how the public body responds to a number of issues, you must get a clear idea of the legislative framework in which the public authorities work.

You must respond in coordination with the requirements set out in the tender announcement, as this allows for easier evaluation. You must also frame your response in a detailed manner, as this will show that you studied the invitation to tender thoroughly and have understood its requirements. For your response to be easily verifiable, you must ensure that you have documents to support all your business claims and that these documents are listed as appendices for easy reference.

You must remember to clearly mention your experience in similar projects, your business track record and your achievements in the area while competing for government contracts. This information will prove that you are capable of meeting the demands of the tender and will establish you as a major competitor for the contract. A good word from the press never harms anyone, so if you have any positive mentions in the press or have earned rave reviews for your services, be sure to highlight them. Dont forget to include your companys accreditations in your response and be very clear while providing the pricing structure.

Following these steps will help ensure that your organisation, and not your competitors, makes the winning bid.

The writer of this article is associated with Tracker, a business intelligence service of BiP Solutions. Tracker is an information service that allows clients to engage effectively when dealing with public sector tenders in the UK.

About the Author: Website:

tendermatch.co.uk/

Source:

isnare.com

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