If you’re dabbling with the idea of responding to tenders for education contracts, or you’ve had a few goes but not been successful, this article gives you a starting point, and a bundle of questions to work through to see if it is worth your organisation bidding for an education tender.
A good friend of mine and successful technical bid writer, Paul Isaacs, recommends a handful of simple questions that an organisation should ask itself when a tendering opportunity lands in the inbox: Is it real? Do we want it? Can we do it? Is it worth it?”
Is it real?
Some organisations put contracts out to tender merely as a means of shaking up the existing provider or to comply with legislation or the in-house rule book. This means you have very little chance of winning. Best to try and fish out these red herrings early on.
One way to check whether a tender opportunity is real is to ask lots of questions. The willingness to reply and the quality of the response will often give clues to the validity of the process you’re following.
- When is the new contract up for renewal?
- How soon do you expect the new provider to be up and running in the new role?
- How much access will the new provider be given to key staff such as managers, trainees, even the previous provider?
In some educational contexts when you’re delivering courses to groups of people, you need to know a lot about who those people are, so can you get more detail about the number of trainees involved, their geographical distribution, the frequency and duration of the intended training programmes, and how the groups will be decided.
The client should be very keen to answer these questions because the better you understand the work, the more pertinent your proposal will be. A real client will value that. So is it real? If so, the next question becomes even more tantalizing.
Do we want it?
So, assuming you believe you have a very clear picture of what this work will entail a good next step is for you to ask yourself how winning and delivering this contract will help you to move closer to your strategic goals. Whilst you might be transfixed by the light of the big new shiny project, is it going to drag you off course and away from your higher goals? Sure, you’ll be able to justify it, albeit tenuously, but does it fit with your mission as an organisation? Does it sit comfortably within your values, or might it grate with some of your morals and ethics? Part of the “do we want it” needs to centre around your practical ability to deliver, and at what cost:
Can we do it?
Do you have the available resources? Depending on the scale of the project, it may be unrealistic to believe you can service this contract with existing staff who are already busy with their day job. You may need to draft in a consultant for a couple of weeks just to put the bid together and comply with the requirements. That might in turn involve creating or updating some of the more unusual policy documents (which may be no bad thing). Plan in time too for preparing written documents, or even an online presentation. There may be several rounds to this too, so you’ll need someone to coordinate the response and administer each step. Once you’ve won the contract you will also need to allow time for the legal side of things, drafting and negotiating the contract, agreeing payment terms, ensuring that you meet the requirements of the tender, that you demonstrate the outcomes in the right way, that you can secure the results-based final payment.
Then there’s the delivery. If you are going to go for it, make sure the delivery is within your core competency. Can you identify staff within the organisation who could provide the programme as specified, and are they willing, able and available to do so? How will their involvement in this project affect their current work? If it requires some kind of adaptation or re-write of course content, do you have someone who can do that, with experience within the field? If not, do you have time and the contacts to recruit someone?
What percentage of your total annual business does this represent? Are you comfortable with that?
Is it worth it?
The big temptation with tenders is the money. In financial terms, a big cash boost is often very welcome. It is vital to know, though, that the profitability you have envisaged will make it through to the very end of the profit & loss account. When you’re costing the project, be generous with your costs, add in contingency, put in provision for the extra staff, even if you’re not entirely sure yet what they’ll be doing.
There are other longer term considerations to challenge the more immediate benefits to cashflow and profitability, too. Successful or unsuccessful delivery may affect your reputation as an organisation. You also need to think of opportunity costs – will this behemoth make it impossible to go for other more relevant opportunities? It may also distract you from other parts of the business which are going well. Is there a risk your existing customers will suffer a drop in service levels?
My experience is that tender-based contracts can be both lucrative and highly beneficial to your organisation, but best to ensure, as granny always used to say, that your eyes aren’t bigger than your belly, and you don’t bite off more than you can chew.
This article was first written by Richard Bradford for Daily Genius. Richard Bradford is managing director of Disquiet Dog, a consultancy in digital education and strategy based in Worthing, UK.
