80% of the tender management teams we speak to haven’t done anything yet with data. If you ended up on this page, you may be one of them.
If so, we have two pieces of good news for you:
- After today you can be ahead of that 80%.
- You've come to the right place to do that.
You realise that you are sitting on a wealth of data. Maybe you know that you can only really improve your teams and texts if you understand the data behind it. You may want to improve your offering based on the results of your tenders.
Then we have even more good news: That's all possible.
How?
Time to read on and find out which software is best for that.
What exactly is tender management?
Tender management is the role that sets out the direction and project management when writing in on tenders. Tender management is responsible for researching the contracting authority, the tender and the market environment. With all the information gathered in that research, it forms a plan to win the tender.
As a key part of the registration process, tender management identifies the project risks and finds suitable solutions for the registration. The central focus here is determining the correct strategy.
Although tender management often concerns assignments from (semi-)governments, it exists in several sectors and is also called bid management.
What is a good tender management strategy?
You will of course start the tender in time, we don't have to tell you that anymore. But where do you start? And more importantly, what is a winning strategy?
Influence
With the help of signalling tools you have a clear picture of the expected tenders from a contracting authority. Engage with sales in time, so that you can advise them even before the tender has been formed. This way you are always one step ahead of your competitors.
Moreover, you know who makes the decision about awarding the tender. Then you also know who you approach to find out what their interests are in completing the contract.
Additionally, use the information notice to ask critical questions about what the goals of the contracting party are.
Strategy
Price/quality
There is often uncertainty about what determines the award of a tender. In many cases this is due to the assessment method, or the tenderer's lack of knowledge of this.
Make sure you are not one of those tenderers. Because this not only causes uncertainties, but It can also cause you to lose unfairly. In assessment methods that are relative, you depend on many factors.
With clarity about what influences your score, you know how to make a winning offer.
But don't take our word for it. Jan Telgen, Emeritus Professor of Public Procurement, said it during his Bid Management Masterclass:
The customer
The content of current contracts from the contracting authority clearly shows which USPs you should focus on. There are many data points you can know about your customers beforehand. For example, Altura can tell you:
- The most commonly used quality criteria
- Frequently asked requirements
- Previous tenders
- Current tender executors
So you know exactly where you need to sharpen your offer, without investing a lot of time. You may also save on an expensive consultant. Enrich these data points with answers you get from the information notice and shape your winning strategy.
Competition
Is the incumbent party your competition again? And what are they doing right or wrong? Who else is eligible to participate? What do they score well on?
Just like with the customer, you know a lot of data from competitors. You can start your research on Google and Contracts Finder. With Altura, you can also easily perform an analysis. That's where you see your competitor’s:
- Current contracts
- Well-scoring award criteria
- Performance in relation to the customer or you
After the analysis, you will know where you can make a difference and which USPs you should focus on in your winning strategy.
Management
The project management
The management of each tender is different. But here you will find the leading tasks of the average tender manager during a tender:
- Leading the team
- Substantiating price
- Drafting the proposal
- Drawing up the action plan
- Representing the organisation
- Determining the winning strategy
- Setting plans and ensuring compliance
- Monitoring quality, budget, capacity, opportunities and risks
- Creating support for the registration process within the organisation
- Evaluating enrollment performance and drawing conclusions to improve
- Communicating with the client, external partners and the departments involved within the organisation
Text and visuals
Unfortunately, there is no standard writing approach for a tender to always win. But how do you convey the right proposition well?
Clarify visualises a target group analysis on Altura's Bid Management Masterclass.
Clarify gave us these 9 important tips during our bid management masterclass for a good text and the design of a tender:
- Do not simply copy information from a previous tender.
- Start by distinguishing between main and sub-questions.
- Write what the customer wants to hear and what you can offer. Not what you want to say.
- Write point by point, discuss the content and only then write in full short sentences.
- Use your tone of voice to convey your identity.
- Take the reader by the hand.
- Use the reader's imagination by working with a metaphor in text and images.
- Refer to the visuals in the text and vice versa.
- Create a collaboration between the subject matter expert and the writer. The expert provides content and the writer creates the framework.
What you should pay attention to when choosing the right tender management software
There are plenty of options to choose from with tender management software. So the first step is to know what to expect before you make the decision about your investment.
What is the minimum I can expect?
In all cases, the following is needed in matters to have a good tender management software.
- You can manage different teams and specialists in your project environment.
- You will receive proper onboarding to get the most out of your software.
- You can manage documents centrally, so that the basis of the new text is always good.
- You should never have to search through tender databases again.
- Your insight into your competition and future customers increases significantly.
- You can use AI in your tender and RFP management.
How do I maximise my choice of tender management software?
The best solutions in tender management software offer you AI that:
- Organises your planning
- Provides text suggestions.
- Allows you to search through multiple documents at once.
- Searches tender databases twice a day to provide updates.
- Finds proposals based on your labels and keywords, matching semantically.
Providers who now offer you these options see AI as the future and are already actively investing to be at the forefront. Those who don’t are falling behind.
The best tender management tools of 2024
Now we move on to our selection of the best tender management tools of 2024. Which ones are you going to try out?
1. Altura
Website
Category
End-to-end tender management system with advanced AI suite
Features
Identifying new opportunities (tenders & RFPs)
- Forecasting of RFPs and tenders up to 4 years into the future
- Incoming tenders in a dashboard, not separate emails
- Database updated 4 times a day, 48 hours earlier than Tenderned, from all tender publication platforms
- Document analysis based on your defined information requirement
- Email reminders when tenders from the forecast hit your inbox
Qualification
- Build the entire qualification process you use in Excel within Altura
- Bid/no-bid checklist
- Automatically create a traffic light report in PDF
- Data analyses on bid/no-bid insights
- With Document Chat, quickly and accurately extract information from tender and RFP documents through a chat interface
Collaboration/project management
- Dashboard and project management module for tracking submissions with tasks
- Automates manual tasks such as creating schedules and assigning to-dos per project phase
- Content library allowing you to find the right piece in just a few clicks
- Connects everyone involved in bids from sales, legal, finance, operations, and more
Proposal Writing
- With ProposalWriter, generate draft proposals in minutes based on past content with the help of AI
- With the AI-driven content library, find your relevant pieces even if you don’t know the exact search term
Analysis
- Evaluations of award decisions
- Data insights from bid/no-bid and performance data
- Accurate market insights on competitors, pricing, schedules, and trends
- Insights into all contracting authorities and bidding parties in the Benelux
Implementation
Onboarding, with ongoing support from customer support.
2. TendersOnTime
Website
Categories
Government platform
Functions
- Collects procurement opportunities from various sources in the United Kingdom
- Search profile with daily email based on CPV code
- Possibility for the processing of tenders
Implementation
Customer support available
3. TenderEyes
Website
Categories
E-tender tool
Important features
- Tender database
- Search profiles and signalling with prediction
- Dashboard for your tender process with tasks
- Deadlines of all active tenders in an overview
Implementation
Customer support available
4. MyTenders
Website
Categories
Signalling tool
Important features
- Search for and respond to tenders
- Manage bid submissions
- Includes a wide range of sectors
- TenderDirect feature to send you tenders automatically through email
Implementation
Customer support is available, additional price for TenderDirect mailing of upcoming tenders.
5. Contracts Advance
Website
Categories
E-tender tool
Important features
- Tender database
- Search profiles and signalling with tender predictions
- Daily alerts
- Deadlines of all active tenders in an overview
- Updates if your competitor is awarded a tender
- Show competitor key contacts and previous suppliers
Implementation
Onboarding
Which tender management software suits your company best?
Not every organisation is the same. This means that there are different software solutions for different subscribers. Just like with a Bid/No-bid for a tender, you weigh several factors:
- How many hours does my organisation spend on tender management and analysis, searching for documents, communicating, identifying tenders, making plans and optimising texts?
- How many people do I work with on tender registrations?
- How much budget do I have for making my processes more effective?
We don't have to explain to you that with more hours and more people in tender management, you achieve relatively more efficiency with tender management software.
If you write a tender less than 10 times a year on average, a signalling module will help you significantly with your tenders.
In Altura, you can see tenders up to 3 years before they are announced. Additionally, they are transported into your projects automatically multiple times a day. With daily updates on that process. This means you never have to look at a database again and you won't miss a tender.
The more tenders you submit, the more award and submission data you have available. Applying data in tender management is easiest to do with Atura. Altura combines historical tender data and market information with your performance data. The dashboards that present this information are interactive and user friendly.
This allows you to select which data you want to see. Providing you with countless insights for fine-tuning your tender text. But also for the development of your organisation and offering.
Improve your tender management today with a full-cycle solution
Altura supports the entire bid process of the bid team and automatically captures important data. This way you can automate recurring tasks and use valuable insights. Also for RFPs.
By using Altura, you can significantly increase the output of your bid teams and improve your chances of winning in tenders. Get to know us today.
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