By Kate Burrows, Managing Director, Tender Training College
Gone are the days in tendering when everyone on the bid team was located under the one roof for the duration of the tender period.
Nowadays with the benefit of technology, it is not uncommon for members of tender teams to be working remotely in various geographical locations, including in different corners of the globe.
There are many benefits to working as a remote tender team. You have access to ‘world-class’ team members and people can work ‘around the clock’ across different time zones to achieve more efficient outcomes.
But with the benefits, comes the challenges.
I’ve noticed these issues pop up from working in and managing remote tender teams across Australia and New Zealand over the last several years. These are the workarounds I have employed to help overcome these trials.
1. Avoid death by email
Email communication in tenders is ridiculously voluminous at the best of times. But, when it is the primary source of communication between remote bid team members, it can easily become unmanageable and potentially blow up your inbox!
At the beginning of the tender, agree with your team, or work stream:
- How you will communicate
- Who needs to know what and by when?
- A priority system for relaying your information.
For instance, you might agree to:
- A daily team video conference to discuss matters impacting all team members
- Phone calls between key members to resolve urgent issues
- Send all files through a document management system
- Save emails for formal, transactional communications.
I have also found the occasional text message can be quite effective for matters that require an urgent, but informal answer.
2. Prevent document or version control nightmares
We have all been there. You spend hours making changes to a document, only to find someone on the other side of the country has also been working on the same file, and you now have two versions.
Document control and version control go hand-in-hand, and you need to agree a system for both early in the tender to avoid multiple headaches.
These days, the beauty of modern technology also provides a range of options to:
- Enable simultaneous inputs to, or reviews of a document
- Keep the versions of documents in a controlled and orderly manner.
Regardless of what system your team is using, ensure everyone understands how to use it and the importance of using it to avoid document and version control nightmares.
3. Keep a single source of truth
“But I thought we decided to bid 20 units, not 40 units to help keep our costs down,” one bid team member said to another.
“Well, the operations guy told me 40 units, so that’s what I am going with,” the colleague replied.
Keeping your team’s bid strategy consistent and up-to-date is a massive challenge when you are working in different corners of the state or globe.
It is vital to know who in the team is responsible for determining and communicating the bid strategy to keep a single source of truth in the written response.
Clear roles and responsibilities will help achieve this, as well as strong leadership and effective communication.
Successful bid leaders will provide regular updates on matters of strategy that impact the team, and have a system for ensuring that the bid documents retain a consistent message.
However, ultimately as a bid team member, we each have a responsibility to make sure we are on the same page as our colleagues – no matter where we are working from.
