Tender Reviews – Red Flags and How to Improve

Published 13/07/2020
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Tendering can often be a stressful, difficult and time-consuming process for any business. Did you remember to attach that vital certificate?
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Have you included the relevant information in your answers? Have you provided the relevant case studies? Given the complexity of the tendering world, it is crucial to have a second pair of specialist eyes glance over your tenders.

How Tender Reviews Work:

Tender reviews consist of having a specialist team or individual look over your proposals, be it PQQs, ITTs or any of the intricacies within.

Each aspect of your proposal will be looked over with a fine-tooth comb, ensuring that you have submitted responses that reflect what the buyer requests and also utilised the best of your business’ relevant sector experience.

Tenders will often differ from one another and hence each response you make must be tailored to the buyer’s specific demands.

Our Tender Mentor service provides that vital guidance to get you over the last hurdle and ensure that your tenders are as fine-tuned as they can be.

Our expert team have been producing tenders for over a decade for all different sectors, as well as holding experience on the buyer’s side, critiquing and marking tenders against scoring mechanisms.

Having this expert guidance allows your tenders to stand out from the crowd and ensures your business is showcased in the best possible light.

We also provide a Tender Improvement package in which we carry out reviews on any unsuccessful tenders.

In this, we analyse previous tenders and provide feedback as to what went wrong and what can be done to improve your tendering efforts going forward.

We provide improvement points to allow individuals/teams to strengthen future responses and falls in line with our ethos of improving tender success rates for all.

Common Mistakes That Tender Reviews Flag:

Failure to follow the specification

Often suppliers will fail to fully digest the buyer’s specification, this can result in responses that can often be irrelevant and superfluous. Our expert team will flag this before it is too late, allowing you to keep your responses to the point and ensure you reflect the buyer’s demands.

Time management

Managing tender deadlines is an essential part of providing detailed and thorough responses. Rushing responses can often result in forgetting to attach vital certifications such as ISO certificates, staff qualifications, CVs and company organograms, to name a few. Tender reviews can flag any failure to attach certificates and will ensure that you accurately submit all information in your responses. For further information on this please see our ‘Time Management’ video on our Tender VLE site.

Incorrect formatting

Indeed, this sounds simple enough, however, ITTs can often be particularly lengthy, and we can all make mistakes. Buyers will often specify a certain font and size and this needs to be consistent throughout. As well as this, incorrect formatting such as mismatched paragraphs and bullet points can look messy and off-putting to buyers. The tender review process can ensure that all formatting remains consistent and that your tender submissions are visually appealing to buyers.

Proof Reading

One of the key mistakes in tendering is failing to proofread the content you produce. Rushing work can often lead to mistakes in spelling, grammar and punctuation, making your work appear unprofessional. Tender reviews can alleviate the need to proofread, ensuring that all your work is spelt correctly and flows in a way which appeals to buyers and can be easily understood. Our team of procurement experts can rigorously check your responses for any mistakes, providing you with peace of mind with every submission.

We understand the many difficulties associated with tendering and our goal is to make this easily accessible for all businesses.

If you require any more information do not hesitate to get in touch with our Consultants team who will be happy to guide you with all your tendering endeavours.

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About The Author

Hudson is a global provider of tendering and business development solutions. The Hudson Group is split into eight strands, allowing us to help businesses at every level. No matter the size or industry, we help companies, both nationally and internationally, to reach their full potential. Our team has decades of experience, helping companies to find and win the contracts they want to deliver. Last year alone, we secured over £300 million in direct contract wins for our clients.

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