What is tender management?
Tender Management is the process of planning, selecting and publishing bids efficiently, keeping a clear audit trail that can be used to determine best practice for future contracts.
If your organisation is planning on implementing a tender management solution into its procurement strategy, read our top tips below.
Master best practice for tender management
Too often when public sector buyers re-tender, they have forgotten the lessons learned from previous tenders. The end result is a tender notice that goes back to square one and doesn’t reflect the authority’s needs.
Evaluating old tenders will:
- Improve on the results of previous tenders.
- Remind buyers of solutions that were previously offered by bidders, giving them ideas for requirements for ‘added value’ when they re-tender for the same or similar contracts.
- Give buyers ideas of methodological or technological changes suggested by previous bidders, which may be of more relevance now.
- Help buyers write the new tender specifications, and so lead to a smart contract.
And that is how you master best practice for tender management.
Budget time smartly
Ideally, each project would have a tender manager whose job it would be to track progress, ensuring all the documentation was being saved and competitors’ questions were being answered promptly.
Delta provides a central, secure, online solution that simplifies and automates many of the time-consuming processes involved in creating and issuing calls for competition and managing tender responses.
Delta’s rich functionality covers all aspects of tender management from commissioning, notice creation, pre-qualification and issuing of invitations to tenders to evaluation of responses and award of contract and even contract management.
Having a comprehensive tender management solution allows you to significantly reduce both the processing cost of procurement and the timescales for tenders above the OJEU procurement thresholds.
Challenge yourself
The EU procurement regulations allow for suppliers to challenge the buyer when they believe they have been treated unfairly during the tendering process. Even if unsuccessful, such a challenge can be time-consuming as it stalls the contract’s progress.
Prevent challenges before they arise by double checking your tender documents:
- At SSQ stage, ensure you have not incorrectly excluded any bidders
- At the tender stage, double check all important information is fully shared with all bidders
- At the tender stage, look out for anything that could be seen as biased marking
- At the tender stage ensure you do not alter the award criteria or weightings after receiving bids
How Delta can help simplify your tender management process?
Delta offers a range of robust, efficient, compliant solutions which enable you to engage with clients, coordinate complex collaborative projects, publish your notices to OJEU & Contracts Finder, manage your clarifications, evaluate your responses and award your contracts.
Our service delivers full UK and EU compliance in a securely hosted, auditable, and protected environment.
For more information on tender management and to discuss your requirements request a demo with one of our procurement experts.