Welcome to the TenderEyes FAQs page giving you more in-depth answers to some of the typical questions the TenderEyes Team are asked about tendering, Bid Management best practice and the TenderEyes software.
If the question and answer you are looking for is not here, please use the Contact Us form to ask and we will get back to you with an answer.
Tendering 101 FAQs
Answer
A Bid or Tender Management System is a dedicated software solution, designed for bidding organisations to organise and deliver their end-to-end Tender opportunities and submissions responsibilities.
The solution should ideally include intuitive tools and smart workflows to help your team better manage the process and multiple activities involved in Tender management. This includes:
- Sourcing and qualification Tender opportunities
- Easy and quick project set up
- Streamlined workflows and tasks automation
- Collaboration and team working
- Information management and sharing
- Approvals, governance, auditing and reporting mechanisms.
Many organisations are still undertaking their bid management activities using generic business tools, such as email and spreadsheets and finding these solutions inadequate for the complexity of tasks involved.
More Information
Read ‘Best Tender Management Tools to Win More Business!’ Blog to discover the impact of these generic business tools and the benefits of dedicated Tender Management Software.
Answer
A Tender is a proposal submitted by organisations competitively bidding for contracts for the supply of products and services.
These contracts are usually complex and of high value and may be issued by public and private sector procuring agencies. Public sector organisations are required by legislation to publicly advertise contracts over a certain value and will follow prescribed Tender procedures.
There are several types of Tender process, including the Open Procedure, which is the most commonly used. There are set stages as described below, required to be completed within set timescales. The completion of the main Tender submission is usually required within a 6-8 week period.
- The Tender is advertised on a Public Procurement Portal (e.g. TED/FTS)
- The Bidding Organisation submits an Expression of Interest (EOI)
- The Bidding Organisation reviews the Selection Questionnaire (SQ), Invitation to Tender (ITT) and supporting documentation
- The Bidding Organisation completes the detailed SQ and ITT
- Submitted Tenders are evaluated and scored by the Procuring Agency
- A Pre-award Notice is issued to the preferred and other bidders
- When uncontested for 10 days the Procuring Agency confirms the winning supplier and contracts are signed.
More Information
- Read the ‘6 Types of Tender Process’ Blog for a description of the types of Tender procedure.
- Read ‘The Tender Process: What to Expect, Step by Step’ Blog to understand the Open Tender Procedure and how Bid Management Technology can help better manage the process.
Answer
Public Sector Tenders over a certain value are required to be publicly advertised.
For example, within the EU this is through the OJEU (Official Journal of the European Union). This takes the form of a Tender or Contracts Notice and is available online through the TED EU Procurement Portal. UK Notices are now published on the Find a Tender Service.
Contract Notices can be found on individual country, or individual government agency or sector specific Portals such as Health and Defence and can be viewed by any organisation or individual.
These Procurement Portals tend to offer options for searching and filtering on contract notices, including location, type of notice, business sector, keywords, procurement value and date ranges.
There are three alternate ways organisations commonly source Tender opportunities.
- Register directly with the desired Procurement Portal and receive automatic notifications within your email inbox.
- Subscribe to a third-party Tender Alerts service provider, who will undertake the searching, filtering and notification of relevant opportunities on your behalf.
- Link relevant Procurement Portals to their dedicated Bid Management Solution, such as TenderEyes. This provides automatic search, filter and population of opportunities within the platform and a fully integrated sourcing, qualification and submission process.
More Information
- Read ‘Finding Tenders: The Art of Sourcing & Targeting’ Blog to find a list of top Procurement Portals and smarter ways to source and qualify your best-fit Tender opportunities.
Bid Management Best Practice FAQs
Answer
Bidding for high value Tenders is a complex process, requiring exceptional coordination and management of people, information and content, all set within tight timescales.
Challenges may include:
- Managing a varied, challenging workload
- Time pressures & constraints
- Collaboration between departments & people
- Undertaking numerous repetitive tasks
- Managing vast amounts of information
- Developing high quality Tender responses • Securing approvals & sign offs.
It is a big investment for any organisation in both time and resources. Being highly competitive and crucial to the business’s revenue goals and profits, it is imperative to reduce the impact of the above challenges. This will result in being able to deliver better quality Tender responses, secure higher evaluation scores and increase win probabilities.
Getting your Bid Management strategies, objectives, processes and people skills and engagement right, is crucial to success.
Following best practice and utilising appropriate dedicated Bid Management Software and tools will also go a long way to conquering these challenges.
More Information
- Read ‘Top 10 Bid Management Challenges to Conquer’ Blog for more challenges and how to overcome them.
- Download Bid Management Challenges Infographic.
- Download 10 Step Guiding Principles Infographic.
Answer
Winning a Tender requires the coordination of multiple activities. This includes understanding complex Tender requirements and evaluation criteria, then compiling response content for the submission. This process is made even more challenging by the involvement of contributors across numerous business disciplines all working within set tight deadlines.
A sophisticated enterprise level Tender Management Solution, such as TenderEyes, provides a dedicated platform to manage all stages, processes and activities associated with bid management.
Benefits include:
- Proper selection and qualification of Tender opportunities
- Easier access and management of content and reference material
- Streamlined workflows and automated activities
- Wider collaboration and engagement
- Competitive understanding and response delivery
- Greater governance and risk management
- Performance analysis and insight.
This will contribute to increased working efficiencies and provide your teams with more time to focus on improving the quality of your Tender responses. Thus, leading to increased evaluation scores and greater win probabilities.
More Information
- Read ‘TenderEyes in Focus: Solution Overview’ Blog for more details on how a Tender Management System can help.
- Download our FREE eBook ‘A Practical Guide for Bid Management Excellence & Success: Process & People’ for advice and tools to help you win more tenders.
Answer
To compete and win Tenders requires clear strategies, resources and commitment to achieve. To compete at a world-class level requires additional focus on first-rate methodologies and Bid Management best practice.
This holistic approach will need to encompass all aspects of Tender Management from initial opportunities sourcing through to project managing Tender responses and submissions and delivery of the won contract.
Consideration will need to be given to product positioning, marketing, quality and regulatory disciplines, business processes and competitive differentiation to ensure Tender responses are of the highest quality and deliver good evaluation scores.
Following our 10-Step Guiding Principles and best practice blogs and eBooks may assist you in developing your own best practice.
The 10 Steps have been developed from a wealth of operational, executive and bid governance expertise together in collaboration with highly experienced corporate bid professionals. The best practice covers the end-to-end Bid Management journey and is a key component of our product development and support services.
The TenderEyes Solution itself, offers a clear and defined path towards achieving the highest levels of Bid Management performance and best practice.
More Information
- View our Best Practice 10-Step Philosophy page
- Download 10 Step Guiding Principles Infographic
Answer
Properly selected targets are critical to improving your win ratio. Finding your best-fit opportunities will allow your team to deliver the most comprehensive Tender responses and submission. Improving your evaluation scores and win probabilities.
This requires thorough knowledge and understanding of the procurement codes and keywords your customer base uses to place contract adverts.
This understanding needs to be correlated with 2 key sets of data:
- The products and services identified in your Corporate, Business and Sales Plans.
- Procurement codes and keywords that your competitors are winning Tenders against.
This will ensure that you are bidding for the products and services identified by the senior managers in your organization and bidding head-to-head with your competitors.
Adopting Tendering Software, such as TenderEyes, will give you full control in targeting and sourcing best-matched opportunities based on your identified procurement codes and keywords. Defined workflows will allow sales team to fully qualify opportunities to set criteria and sales models, ensuring consistency and alignment to sales objectives.
Management controls such as Decision Gates will provide the ability for them to record and present their reasons for choosing the opportunity and Approvals which allow authorization from management to proceed.
More Information
- Check out the TenderEyes Opportunities Manager Module
- Read ‘Finding Tenders: The Art of Sourcing & Targeting’ Blog to find a list of top Procurement Portals and smarter ways to source and qualify your best-fit Tender opportunities.
TenderEyes Software FAQs
Answer
TenderEyes is a cloud-based solution providing easy deployment, flexible scalability and anywhere, anytime access. It is Microsoft Office 365 based application and is accessed via your current Office 365 credentials. Access within the system is controlled by a roles-based security model.
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TenderEyes easily manages multiple bids in terms of capacity and storage. There is no limit on the number of bids which can be created and managed at any point in time.
The solution can help ensure each project adheres to standard operating procedures, processes and governance. This will ensure consistency of approach and decision-making across teams, divisions and countries if required.
This will provide a stronger platform for greater working efficiencies and more time to craft quality Tender responses. It will also offer greater insight into global performance and results, with further opportunities for longer-term continuous improvements.
Answer
Languages
The primary user interface of TenderEyes is in English. Microsoft language packs can be enabled if required and an additional glossary of terms can be held in a multiple language list.
The Knowledge Bank Module has auto-translate functionality to allow for a relationship between multiple language answers and search functionality.
Currencies
TenderEyes has the capacity for Microsoft currency preferences to be enabled. It also interfaces with foreign exchange databases as designated by customers, to allow for local, regional and reporting conversion of currencies.
Answer
Access to content by TenderEyes Users is controlled by a roles based security model. Access can be allowed or restricted at various levels including modules, projects, folders and documents. The roles based security model is designed with the customer during the implementation phase.
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Data
The TenderEyes application will be hosted on your existing Microsoft Office 365 infrastructure. Levels of security will already have been determined by your internal IT resources. Microsoft provides market-leading levels of IT security and resilience.
Intellectual Property
The TenderEyes team fully understands that at the time of submitting your Tender response, the documentation provided is the most up-to-date commercially sensitive Intellectual property you may have. Access within the TenderEyes application is controlled by a roles-based security model to determine who has access to the system at various permission levels. The TenderEyes application also has a Governance & Security Module that allows full audit trails, reporting and analytics of how authorised users are behaving within the application.
Answer
TenderEyes has the capacity for import and export of data in a variety of ways and levels:
- Simple cut and paste of information into Knowledge Bank and Projects
- Upload of single and multiple files and folders into document libraries (drag and drop / File Explorer)
- Export of simple list data to Excel / Power BI
- Export of project plans to Excel and Microsoft Project
- Import of complex data via Microsoft tools – Power Automate
- Interrogation of data for specific export via TenderEyes Office Add-in
- Bespoke integration of CRM or ERP data depending on customer requirements
