How to automate your tendering and bidding

What is a tender?

Quite simply put, a tender is a request by Party A to receive offers from Parties X/Y/Z for the purposes of completing a project. Typically, party A is a large organization, like say the government. Let’s assume Party A wishes to construct a road in the city and Parties X/Y/Z are the road-building experts. Party A will put out a tender (similar to an advertisement) in the leading newspapers outlining what the project is, and what they require to be done. When parties X/Y/Z see this tender, they will prepare a bid for the project and submit it to Party A. Party A then evaluates each bid and selects the best possible one. The selected Party then gets the contract to build the road.

References to the tending process have been found as far back as 3000 BC in ancient Egypt. Back then this was used to keep track of the materials and labour required for construction. Later in ancient Rome, this process was used by the Roman empire to create contracts with private suppliers. More recently, Great Britain used it to keep a tab on the goods sold and taxes collected from its colonies.

Today, with the advent of IT and software, the tender bidding process has undergone another drastic change. A lot of the process tasks have been simplified by tending bidding software, and with newer technologies like DevOps, Blockchain, Machine lLearning, and artificial Intelligence AI are continuing to automate things further.

What are the key elements of a tender management system?

Since the tending process is a relatively structured process, the different stages of this process can be automated by the tender management process software. Some of these stages include -

• Keeping track of and maintaining the different active tenders. The software must be able to identify the different tenders that have been issued through the system.
• Maintaining the content of each submitted tender

Tracking the bids that come in. One of the things software does is that makes it easier to issue tenders, and therefore to respond to them. Which is why one can expect an increase in the number of bids when you use tending bidding software.

• Keeping track of the changes in the bids by maintaining an audit trail
• Maintaining a database of documentation for historical tender and bid records

Buyer Benefits:

• Time savings from tender management
  Easily accessible tender drafts
  Full audit trail
  Completely online portal operation
  Cost reduction in tender preparation and distribution
  Better submissions resulting from up-to-date software
  Secure and limited access via individual passwords

Bidder Benefits:

• Early access to tenders
  Database of text, graphics needed for bid submission
  Full history of prior bids, along with detailed times, dates of submission and analytics
  Ready availability of statutory forms
  One-stop shop stop for best practices

The questions to ask when you choose your tender management system

• Does the system manage the entire tender process from start to finish, right from tender issuance to contract signing?
  What are the fees for issuing tender requests to companies online?
  Does the system notify companies in near real-time of any changes in the tender specifications?
  How many users are allowed to operate the system? Do they have different access controls for different users?
  Does the system keep a repository of old tenders?

  One such tender management system by Tenderly.ca has been developed using inputs from Board Members and Property Management Service Providers in the condominium industry. The system is designed to provide security and transparency to all parties involved in the tendering process. It ensures fair bidding opportunities for vendors and better pricing for corporations. The user interface is easy, with little to no user training needed.

How Tenderly works?

A property manager posts a job and sets a deadline
The contracts in the portal get notified to submit bids; new vendors are invited
Property managers and board members get notified of any new bids (prices remain hidden)
Only after the deadline passes are the bids/prices summarized for review.