Performance Review 2020
A new year and a new performance review. That time has come around again to look back at 2020 as see how we did. For obvious reasons it has been a very strange year, with two UK national lockdowns, various regional restrictions, uncertainty around Brexit, procurement teams predominantly working from home and a general slowing down of procurement activity. The government’s procurement policy notice(s) (read more about it here) meant that buyers, like councils, NHS trusts, universities etc had additional powers to extend existing contracts to avoid running competitive tenders, or directly award contracts to their preferred suppliers. This impacted on the volume of tenders we’ve seen coming through the door. With procurement teams across the country still working from home, managing lengthy procurement processes and coordinating evaluation panels remotely has inevitably become difficult and thus, we’ve seen the number of tenders dropping as a result of the restrictions in place.
This the added disadvantage that the tenders we did see were that much more competitive. With the uncertainty facing businesses in light of both Covid and Brexit, businesses were keen to try and compete for everything that was going. We’ve therefore seen a great deal more companies bidding against our clients.
As mentioned last year, reviewing your company’s performance is becoming more vital if you want to win a public sector tender. Having systems in place to collect and report data is generally a requirement within most council contracts AND it helps you to evidence your successes when writing your bids. So with this in mind, and after another year of bid writing, bid review and general tendering and procurement support to businesses looking to break into the UK public sector, we’ve followed our own advice and taken a look back at this last years’ performance.
Overall Performance
Service Breakdown
Opportunity Breakdown
Industry Breakdown
Comparison Against Last Year
Overall, we’re delighted with the performance and success rate we’ve achieved this year, despite the difficulties 2020 has posed. Our growth from 2019 has demonstrated clearly we’re meeting our key objectives, that is to:
win more tenders and contract value for our clients
get more of our clients on frameworks (see our video about frameworks here)
target SMEs
When looking at our 82% success rate we must consider a few things. Often tenders can be won or lost based on price, as this element of tenders tends to be quite heavily weighted. Pricing is something we leave to our clients as they know their business best and what will work for them economically. In order to review our performance we look at the quality aspects of the tender only. Our definition of “success” includes bids that scored highest on quality but may not have won due to lost marks on price. Essentially including bids that would have won had the pricing been more competitive. This provides us with a more accurate representation of our bid writing success rate. It’s also worth noting that there are many reasons why a bid may not win; the experience of the company bidding; the skillset, resources and infrastructure of the company; and the strength of the competition. All of which have an impact on the chances of winning.
If you’re struggling to get a foot in the door and would like more information on how public sector tendering works, we’ve got some great resources for you.
Videos
Check out our videos page, walking you through various features of bid writing, how tenders are structured and where to find tender opportunities
Training
Our online training course taking you through everything you need to know to begin bidding on pubic sector tenders
eBook
Our eBook with 60 pages of densely packed information covering much of what is in the course, but it also comes with a full list of English councils and links to their procurement portals so you can keep up to date with your local buyers
Articles
Our articles covering our thoughts on procurement and public sector tendering, along with other information about our company
And if you’d like some help, get in touch! Take a look at the services we offer and reach out via our contact form for a no obligation quote for bid writing, bid review, opportunity searching or simply picking our brains on how it all works.