Bid team provider offers advice to contractors

Contractors are not taking bidding seriously and are increasingly squeezing procurement teams' budgets, according to bid team provider OCL.

Speaking at the Winning Defence Contracts conference yesterday (Wednesday), OCL's operations director Anthony Suter told delegates that many contractors, especially in the defence sector, are making the mistake of putting marketing departments low on their agenda - despite running bids for contracts from the department's budget.

OCL, which provides bid teams to increase a contractor's chance of success, has recently worked with names such as Amey and Bechtel.

"If you asked a marketing manager about their interview for their current position you would find none of them would be asked to put the co-ordination and management of bids at the top of their agenda," said Suter.

"Many marketing departments are now finding their budgets cut. I know of one company where bidding had to stop because the marketing budget had been exceeded.

"This could have been avoided if the bidding process was fully integrated into the business cycle and there was a buy-in from the management."

Other common problems, added Suter, were that contractors regard the bid team as carrying out "unpaid work" and are too willing to snatch experienced personnel from one bid to another area of "paid work" within the business.

"Organisations need to understand that bids are essential to their survival and should avoid the urge to break up bid teams," he said.