The business world has reached a point in which, no matter the industry sector you’re activating in, it’s very likely that you, as a bid manager, will have to tackle multiple challenges for both the effective management and production of your bids.
In most cases, an organization has a team composed of a document manager, alongside a bid writer and at least one bid manager. Together they are responsible for the collation of the material, coming up with the solution that will eventually be pitched and putting together the entire document. After this point, it’s where bid managers come in, undertaking analysis of the bid in the draft, identifying all the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, then mitigating the results.
Keeping it short, the entire bid management process consists of two important elements: knowledge flow and people. However, there’s one important aspect you need to take into consideration: many of the bid writers usually have a day job to do. This means they are likely to work in different departments or locations, not to mention that some of them may have not worked in the same place before. The actual time frame for submitting the final bid proposal is incredibly short, which means the process management will be relatively difficult.
Therefore, today we are going to try to find out how to overcome these difficulties, by talking about some of the most common challenges bid managers face. And, of course, how to overcome them.
4 common challenges that bid managers face
1. Deadlines
Unfortunately for bid managers, submission dates are not under the control of organizations, as they should always be prepared and have well-equipped processes at their disposal, but also well-trained resources, in case they need to come up with an urgent submission.
However, it is possible to meet the tightest of deadlines, as long as the actions and all responsibilities are well planned and the organization has a proper knowledge management platform in place.
2. Availability of resources
We’re referring to various resources here, including human resources, infrastructure and many more, as they are all required to complete a bid in time.
Generally speaking, one of the challenges that bid managers face is dealing with a variety of people of multiple disciplines, both internal and external to the organization. And they depend heavily on employees from most company departments, including technical, finance, HT, legal or commercial.
In order to lower this dependency, there is a need for a well-written plan of the bidding process, but also for well-established communication channels and coordination.