Posted on 23-06-2010 at 01:00
Writing a Tender
How to Write a Tender
Writing a tender can be time consuming and difficult to manage. The day to day activities of running a business create competing priorities that sometimes mean that the tender you write is simply not as good as it can be.Here are the top five issues clients tell me about when writing a tender
1. Time: They simply do not have the time to write a tender.
2. Resource: There are no resources to write a tender
3. Experience: They have never had to write a tender before
4. Understanding: They do not understand how to write a tender or how to answer some of the questions
5. They are not good “writers”
Time
When you write a tender it does consume quite a bit of time. A good tender writer will write around 2,000-2,500 words of original content a day. Snippets from existing documents or previous examples obviously help but there is no getting around it, it takes time to right a tender.A tender for a typical SME can be anywhere between 12000 and 30,000 words and some tenders have an even higher word count. When you add formatting, clarifications and gathering the information you can see that your typical tender writer puts an awful lot of time into a typical tender submission.
If you are going to write a tender yourself I would suggest that you create a quiet space that it dedicated to tender writing. This is where you can store all your documents in one place and not worry about documents from your day job getting in the way. If you are busy during the day, try writing on an evening. You will be surprised how much you can get done on a typical evening. Stop working about an hour before normal and dedicate the time to writing a tender. Use the day for gathering information and getting on with running the business.
One final point, give yourself plenty of time. When writing a tender it should not be something to be gotten out of the way, a chore or a nuisance. Writing a tender is a great way of growing your business but if you tries to write it in a week it will be poor and will not reflect your business properly or in the best light. You are better off not writing the tender than rushing it!
Resource
Writing tender needs quite some commitment in terms of resources. We have already discussed time, but if you are to write a tender properly you will need to gather information, sort through the information, research, organise, collate, format etc.
The easy way to write a tender is to either outsource it completely or to divide the sections up between people within the organisation.
The problem with this is that
• Most people will not make the tender their priority
• The tender could become disjointed
• Having people allocated to writing sections of the tender requires a resource itself. Someone must manage and control all the different aspects of the tender.
• If one person misses a deadline the tender may not be able to be submitted
• The points above can all relate to a group of tender writers and not just individuals
If you are going to write a tender by dividing it up between your staff you will need to manage it very carefully. Give clear instructions and make sure everyone understands what is expected of them and when.
Writing aTender: Some pitfalls
Writing a Tender: The ITT
Writing a Tender in a hurry
The easy way to write a tender is to either outsource it completely or to divide the sections up between people within the organisation.
The problem with this is that
• Most people will not make the tender their priority
• The tender could become disjointed
• Having people allocated to writing sections of the tender requires a resource itself. Someone must manage and control all the different aspects of the tender.
• If one person misses a deadline the tender may not be able to be submitted
• The points above can all relate to a group of tender writers and not just individuals
If you are going to write a tender by dividing it up between your staff you will need to manage it very carefully. Give clear instructions and make sure everyone understands what is expected of them and when.
Writing aTender: Some pitfalls
Writing a Tender: The ITT
Writing a Tender in a hurry
