As governments and other major public companies continue to outsource their service delivery through open competitive tender, it is the role of the Bid Manager to lead the submission that has the potential to win the contract.
Many organisations rely heavily on supply contracts for survival, bringing bid management higher up the value chain and making it one of the most sought-after skills in high growth industries, such as engineering, construction and ICT. Bid Managers are relatively inconspicuous compared to their colleagues in pre-sales, but they are equally critical for capturing a pipeline of business to sustain and grow a business.
Bid management is now its own discipline
Robert Walters Recruitment has highlighted procurement and supply chain professionals as being one of the top five roles in demand currently, while Instructus Skills has noted that 1% of the UK’s working population is involved in bidding and/or tendering. This figure might seem like a small percentage of total employment, but many more people across an organisation will be involved in a major bid at various touchpoints – from subject matter input, to pricing and peer reviews.
Bid Managers often come from project management backgrounds and many have specialist industry or technical knowledge such as engineering. Others may have worked in a business field such as business development, marketing or communication. Because bid management is a comparatively young profession with broad professional representation, there have been few advancements in the technology systems or tools that support best practice bid management processes and methodologies.
Maturity = systemisation
The reliance on document and file repositories, excel spreadsheets, whiteboards and email trail is a shining example of an industry that has been expected to contribute to top line results but not given the tools to do so. While it’s ironic that enterprises in the past have invested in systems to run the business after they have won the work, the good news is that there is an industry transformation occurring. Now a maturing profession, bid management and the role of the Bid Manager is being elevated to executive status with direct reporting to the CEO and Board, along with its own cost centre and dedicated resources. Bid management tools that support best practice processes are now being recognised as essential.
Bidhive is empowering bid teams with an all-in-one platform that shares some of the best qualities found in content management, project management, and work management software. By centralising and streamlining communication, task management and information sharing, bid teams and their organisations can systemise and transform their business processes to improve productivity, collaboration, and work-winning results.
About the author
Nyree McKenzie is the co-founder and CEO of Bidhive. With more than 25+ years’ experience as a Bid Manager and Management Consultant, Nyree has gained significant international experience leading bid teams through complex, high value contract pursuits as well leading enterprise process improvement and change initiatives. Having worked in the bid management industry for many years, Nyree was motivated to help companies scale and transform their painful manual bid processes to achieve more through automation.
About Bidhive
Bidhive helps companies plan, manage and track their bid activity with an end-to-end platform that follows the key stages of the bid lifecycle. From capture planning to proposal development and post-submission analysis, Bidhive provides the framework, critical path and collaboration tools that executives, bid teams and individuals need for improved productivity and bidding success.