Bids, Tenders and Proposals: Winning Business through Best Practice (Bids, Tenders & Proposals: Winning Business Through Best)

When the contract is for an overseas client, particularly in the public sector, the bid specification may require or advise bidders from other countries to associate with a local organization. The client may state that the local organization will be expected to act as the lead firm, while expatriates will be used only for services that cannot be provided by local professionals. If the contract involves a substantial resource commitment as well as a significant element of risk, it may make good sense to share the commitment with local partners and limit the extent of your own risk.

If your business works extensively abroad, you may already have in place a network of partners and associates who you know can play an effective role in a project team and add insight and experience to help you produce a competitive bid. If you are new to an overseas market, and the bid specification either demands association or indicates that it would be helpful, you will have the task of selecting suitable local partners and establishing a working relationship with them.

This is one of the jobs that have to be done on a visit to the location. Getting it right calls for time, patience and judgement, as well as detailed research both before and during the visit. Use contacts in your profession and in related fields; talk to people in banking and business sectors; find out what information is available from export promotion services at home and from the commercial section of your embassy overseas. Clients may sometimes include with their documentation a list or selection of local firms who are registered with them and available to work jointly with external contractors.

Before you hear officially that your firm is on an international shortlist, you may receive messages from prospective local partners seeking to associate in your bid and perhaps claiming to have insider knowledge. Don't rush into commitments, unless you are confident that the firm that has contacted you really is the one that you need, and you are afraid of losing them to the competition. If you can, wait until you are on the scene and then make a judgement based on an informed assessment of their quality and capability. Before you decide, confirm that your associates will be working exclusively with you and not with your competitors too.

Even where local association is not an explicit requirement, there are benefits that associates can contribute to the bid and its development:

• detailed knowledge of the client and its preferences, plus an insight into the contract environment;

• a particular rapport with the client or with individual decision makers, which may derive from previous work for the client, from social and political links, from a shared educational background and similar factors - though you should be cautious about anyone whose strongest credential is political influence;

• the integration of local skills and resources within the contract team;

• language capability, at every step from talking to officials to translating documents and writing text for the bid;

• information about the practical and legal necessities of working in the country, eg professional or commercial registration;

• an awareness of cultural sensitivities and local business usage that steers you clear of possible blunders;

• confirmation, if need be, that you are pursuing a genuine project and that the client does intend to award a contract;

• detailed price information on local services and facilities, as well as ideas about savings and economies in expenses that would not occur to an outsider;

• a means of reducing the total cost of the proposed services, if your local associates have lower payroll costs than you;

• contacts in the banking and financial community;

• logistic support in preparing and producing the bid documents;

• the ability to deal pragmatically with what may discreetly be termed 'facilitation fees'.

It is worth bearing in mind that, if you do win an overseas contract, your local associates can have an essential role to play in getting your invoices paid. There are countries where public sector clients will make direct payments only to local firms, and where the receipt of funds as a matter of routine on the date specified in a contract is virtually unknown. Securing the payment due to you depends instead on a tortuous chain of administrative and commercial intermediaries, each of whom expects a cut. Without local associates to handle this situation, you would literally be at a loss.

On the negative side, an unwise choice of associate can put the entire bid at risk:

• The people you link up with may have professional or political enmities that are unknown to you, or may in the past have worked unimpressively for the client.

• They may claim an excessive proportion of the work programme and try to take control of the bid.

• At the worst, they may be interested mainly in the money and want to gain the maximum fee for the minimum work.

• They may have the leverage to undermine your bid if you get on the wrong side of them.

• You may become linked to a particular firm through a previous contract relationship and then discover they are the wrong associates for this opportunity.

The keys to making the right choice of local associate are:

• Consider more than one candidate.

• Narrow the field down to organizations with a good business reputation, recommended by people whose honesty and impartiality you can trust.

• Check that they satisfy any conditions for association identified in the client documentation. Are they engaged on other work that might disqualify them from participating in your bid?

• Make sure you can communicate directly with the head of the organization. In some countries where not all professionals speak English, your dealings may be channelled through a relatively junior member of staff who happens to have a good command of the language, but may not be in the confidence of senior management. You need to establish a solid link at the top.

• Look for openness, trustworthiness and commitment.

• Ask yourself which organization offers the strongest prospects of performing a satisfactory role in the contract. Remember that, if you are the lead contractor, you will be responsible for your associates' technical performance.

When you have made your choice, prepare a short written agreement summarizing your understanding of the relationship. If appropriate, have the document translated into the associate's language.

In many instances, the most productive and lasting links with local associates have developed from ad hoc working relationships. If you discover reliable partners in one country, you and they can gain from the association by collaborating on similar contracts elsewhere, with advantages and cost savings all round.

Overseas bids: production decisions

One decision that has to be made at this stage is where the bid is to be prepared and produced - overseas or back in your home office? If you decide to do the work locally and stay on to help coordinate the process, an overseas visit can become an extended commitment. You need to consider the following questions:

• Will preparation of the bid require a substantial amount of translation? Does the client want the document in its language? If so, and depending on the place, it may make sense to produce the bid locally.

• Where can the development of the bid be managed more efficiently? Are there critical management decisions that can be taken only on site?

• What are the quality and dependability of the production facilities that local associates can offer?

• Are there requirements such as signatures on forms and CVs that may complicate the logistics of production?

• Which location is likely to offer the better result in terms of the quality and impact of the bid? Local associates will know the kind of document the client expects to see - whether it is a weighty and substantial volume or something concise and economical - and they will be familiar with the standard of design and presentation needed to create an immediately favourable impression. Listen to their advice.