Revenue
Answering tenders
Tenders arrive with fifteen days' notice. Answering means finding the comparable references, the up-to-date CVs, the certificates, the methodologies already written, then drafting a technical submission. The work falls to the partners and the project leads, which is to say the most billable people in the firm. When the workload is high, you do not answer.
An illustrative example, not client work
Who it is for
Engineering firms, consultancies, IT services, agencies
What the problem costs
A tender you do not answer costs you its margin. It is the only case on this list where the time saved is not a saving but an order won.
The process today
- Reading the tender documents and sorting out what is asked for
- Hunting down administrative paperwork, often out of date
- Searching past files for comparable references
- Rewriting a technical submission from the last one that resembles it
- A late review, in the evening, by a partner
The approach we take
We build the firm's memory: past answers, references, methodologies, CVs, certificates. When a tender arrives, an assistant reads the documents, lists the paperwork required and flags what is missing or out of date. It then finds the closest references and proposes a first version of the technical submission, each paragraph pointing back to the file it came from. The partner reviews, rewrites what matters and signs. Nothing goes out without that review.
How it works
5 steps, and a human who decides at the end.
Reading the file
The required paperwork, the scoring criteria and the deadlines are extracted and listed.
Eligibility check
Missing or expired paperwork is flagged before drafting, not after.
References
Comparable files already won are surfaced, with their value and their date.
First version
The submission is assembled from your own writing, sourced paragraph by paragraph.
The call
The partner rewrites the part that makes the difference and decides whether to bid or pass.
Before, after
What changes in your teams' day.
Today
Answering costs two to three days of your best people. You pick tenders by how busy you are, not by your chances of winning.
With the solution
The part that gets copied over is prepared. Partner time goes to the methodology and the price, and you can answer tenders you used to let go.
Expected benefits
- Administrative ineligibility is caught before drafting, not at submission
- Useful references stop depending on the memory of whoever is writing
- Partner time moves from copying to methodology and pricing
- Your bid rate becomes a commercial choice again, not a consequence of the workload
No figure is shown: a gain is not promised before it has been measured at your company.
Prerequisites and limits
- A firm that does not archive its past answers has no raw material: reworking the archives comes first, and it has a cost
- The final technical submission is still written by a human. A file assembled without review shows, and it loses
- Very specific markets, or a first bid in a new field, have no reference to reuse
Systems involved
- Document store of past answers
- Directory of CVs and references
- Tendering platforms
Related service
Design & rollout
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