Feeling a little tender…
The past few weeks have been a blur since I came back from a week’s holiday. Not only did we buy another company at bit10, but I have completed a number of tenders for public sector organisations.
While it has been interesting to see what bit10 can do to help these organisations, the one frustration that I have had when completing the required information is the amount of info they seem to need!!
Some organisations who put out tenders are quite good in that they ask for the right information about the company who are tendering, but some ask for so much information that is irrelevant! PQQs (Pre-Qualification Questionnaires) are annoying because you have to supply information such as insurance details, staff details, policies, accounting information etc.
Now while I have most of this information in one document and can cut/copy/paste as needed, there always seems to be one who asks for something that I can’t quite find and this is what takes up most of my time - searching for that elusive bit of info!
And does it really matter whether we have IS014001 etc. etc. or that we can actually build excellent websites? Yup, we recycle where possible and our solutions aim to be sustainable, and we have carried out our carbon footprint, plus planted a load of trees. Has this helped us to build a cracking website? Not to my knowledge, yet you get more points in evaluations of tenders if you have qualifications like ISO 
Now, the NHS has almost got it right - if you complete the PASA information, then they have a central source of your company’s information, which means that you don’t have to jump through all the hoops each time you want to tender for something.
Why oh why can’t the Government extend this to ALL public sector organisations? And don’t get me started on Catalist either - we came so close last year and only missed out because we didn’t have, yes you guessed it, ISO14001. A few points was all that stood between us.
Wouldn’t it save time and money if companies could log their details with a central system that stored (like NHS PASA) the right PQQ information needed? An annual reminder could be sent out to update these details. Then people like me wouldnt have to keep on completing the same ol’ info each time a new tender came along.
Also, the information provided in tenders varies so much. Some organisations have it spot on - they know exactly what they want and it makes it easier to find out how we can help them. But some just don’t have a clue.
What annoys me are the following in no particular order:
- tenders that are pages and pages full of useless info
- tender organisations that take forever to respond to questions
- tenders that send one-line letters to your submission saying you didn’t get it, even when you have spent nigh-on 40 hours writing the proposal
- tenders that supply Word documents that they want you to complete, then password protect it
- tenders that expect you to stick to their deadline, but then leave you waiting weeks after when they are supposed to respond, but still want you to meet the original due date of the finished project
- tenders that are in Word and use forms/fields that don’t allow you to paste the info into easily without Word reformatting it
And there are many more I am sure!
Not all organisations are bad at preparing tenders, it’s just the ones that are that take the most time to sort and I wonder if the people who put these together actually do realise the amount of work that goes into them!