Buy IT Project Bids - From Process to Success
Thump! A large Invitation to Tender (ITT) has arrived in your in-tray. This is good news – winning new projects by responding to such requests is the life-blood of your business. It could be that you have worked hard to get on the short-list to receive the ITT, or maybe it has arrived unsolicited. Either way, you have to respond to it somehow. There are several decisions to make:
This book aims to answer these questions. It does not cover the estimation and costing of the proposed project, nor how to produce a convincing and persuasive proposal. Those subjects are covered by my other books, which are referenced in Appendix A (Additional Reading). The book you now hold aims to place those specialised skills within an overall framework – a process that will start with the arrival of an ITT and end with the award of a contract. All the task lists, document templates, questionnaires, checklists and models needed for this process can be downloaded free of charge from www.itprojectestimation.com.
I am not aiming to improve your marketing skills so that you receive more ITTs. Instead, I want to achieve something even tougher: to ensure that the proposals that you submit in response to those ITTs are more successful. What is your ‘hit rate’ now in terms of the percentage of proposals that result in a successful sale? Around 20% would be typical. If you could double your current hit rate, you would not only win more business but also eliminate the expense of failed bids. That seems worth a try.
Such improvement is obtained by examining the process, not the content. When a bid fails, it is tempting to blame the proposal: the solution was wrong, the words weren’t convincing, the diagrams were confusing. Of course content is important, but maybe it would be better to take a larger step backwards and ask some more generic questions: Should we have bid at all? Did we have the right people on the Bid Team? Did we choose the right partners or subcontractors? Did we waste time during the bid? Should approval have been given? Did we follow up the proposal effectively? These are all questions of process. The reception of an ITT should set a well-oiled machine into motion, which rolls smoothly on until a winning proposal falls out. Have you ever seen an organisation where such a machine exists? No, me neither. More usually, there are several weeks of anarchy, late nights, stand-up arguments, rushed-through reviews, short cuts and a result that is "the best we could manage". But there are better ways. If we define a process and aim for specific, targeted deliverables at each stage then we can begin to tame the anarchy and improve the result.
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| Price: US $55.00
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| Price: UK £34.00 |
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| Price: EURO 37.50 |
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