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A more strategic approach to your tender process will save you hours of work on every job that comes your way. This will enable you to work more efficiently and redirect your time and efforts to focus on the right projects or on acquiring those projects that deliver the greatest turnover.
Tip 1. Keep all information in one place
Anyone who has tried to search through a pile of paper on a desk to find a certain account number or telephone number will understand how much time can be lost through misplacing information. Missing information and disorganised data can be very costly for you.
Information is often stored at far too many locations. Important figures, expiry dates and communication between team members are all too often located in e-mails, faxes, sticky notes, filing cabinets and on whiteboards that have inevitably been wiped clean by colleagues. The consequence? Whenever the deadline of an invitation to tender approaches, essential information is almost impossible to find.
Ninety-nine per cent of subcontractors who rely on e-mails or Excel to manage invitations to tender miss out on several invitations every year. It is therefore an absolute priority to store invitations to tender at one central location. 12Build offers subcontractors precisely this possibility. Then, when an invitation to tender arrives from a general contractor, you can decide immediately whether or not you are going to send a quote or whether you want a little time to consider it first. 12Build presents a clear overview of all the invitations to tender submitted to you and the status you have allocated to them. Once you have submitted a tender, it too will be properly and systematically stored in the cloud. This will enable you to have instant access to your important invitations to tender and quotes wherever and whenever you like.
With other platforms, subcontractors are forced to pay if they want to submit a tender through the platform. We understand that a platform is only of interest to a general contractor when subcontractors are using the same system. That is why we at 12Build provide subcontractors with a free tool that enables them to access their invitations to tender, download documents, indicate their status and to maintain a clear overview of the communication.
Tip 2. Keep track of data and identify patterns
Data is essential to understand where best to target the time and energy of a team. The objective is not only to procure more projects, but also to submit the right tenders in the most efficient way. Keeping track of data is a crucial part of improving the process.
Recognising trends in your data will enable you as a subcontractors to identify patterns. For example, you can keep track of how many of your tenders to a specific general contractor have been accepted. If a general contractor never assigns a project to you, you can decide whether this general contractor is actually worth your time and effort.
Sixty-five per cent of subcontractors do not keep track of their profit rate. If they did that, they would be one step ahead of the competition. Today, data forms the backbone that supports the effective and efficient working of a company.
Tip 3. Inform general contractors as quickly as possible whether you are intending to send a quote
If there is one tip for subcontractors in the tender process, it is to communicate on time. When a general contractor submits an invitation to tender, there is good reason for it. It is important that you respond quickly and indicate whether you intend to send a quote or not. Data from 12Build reveals that on average it takes 11 days for a subcontractors to respond to an invitation to tender. subcontractors can do this by indicating beneath the invitation to tender that they are intending to submit a quote or not. Indicating the intention to submit a quote will be included in the database and have a positive effect on your position on the list of subcontractors. Average figures from 12Build show that subcontractors with an optimised profile receive 36 invitations to tender more than subcontractors whose profile are not optimised.
This tip is also important because on average general contractors send 2.6 invitations to tender per specialisation per project. If two or three subcontractors indicate that they will not be sending a quote, the general contractor can then immediately submit invitations to tender to the following subcontractors on the list. Fast, effective and efficient. Things we are passionate about.
