The handling of tenders can be a challenging procedure for construction companies that collaborate with outside parties. Lack of control over projects and relationships could emerge from managing multiple contracts and proposals at once without the proper tools. However, a lot of companies are beginning to see how valuable a tender management tool is. Let’s examine four of the main advantages in more detail.
1. Simplifying stakeholder management
Imagine that you have issued a large tender to build a new bridge. A project of this nature may require many stakeholders such as government agencies, construction firms, architects and design companies. The stakeholders will need to approve various stages of the project, to progress work onto the next phase. With a good tender management process in place, you see a clear overview of all stakeholders who are involved, their importance, and what part they are playing, providing more control over your project stages.
2. Reducing the risk of duplicates
Along with managing stakeholders, multiple opportunity management can be a challenging part of the tender management process. Construction suppliers often find themselves in competition with several other companies bidding for the same work at the same time.
Only one will win, which is where accurate forecasting comes into play. For your Sales Manager, forecasting provides visibility of how many quotes you have for the year and ensures you don’t double count quotations in your pipeline, helping you to identify the one most likely to win the bid. With additional tender management functionality available with Dynamics Tender Management integrated into your Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement environment, you can identify opportunities with individual demand. In that way, you avoid double or triple counting one product or service being sold for the same project.
3. Making calculations more visible to speed up approval
Following the qualification of a tender opportunity, in order to move it to the next phase, many approvals may be required. Most large projects involve complex calculations, which make it challenging for senior management or legal departments to view, understand, and sign-off.
This can result in project delays, lost time and money. Specialist software is often used to create quotations, so integrating this part of the tender management process, or making it visible within CRM is, therefore essential. CRM systems such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement can manage the connection with such software, ensuring all parties get access to the right information, helping them to make a more informed decision about signing off a quotation.
4. Greater control over documents
Compared to standard sales processes, tender management can require a very different approach with numerous documents from various suppliers and partners to manage. For example, should you want to tender for a large building construction project, you may need third party input from architects and other suppliers to create a proposal. Traditionally this is done via email, or by using file-sharing platforms.
