Compliance is King
A top tip on bidding - don’t fall at the first hurdle! It’s boring, but following the rules is really important. Compliance is King
Particularly in the public sector, but I would also argue in the private sector - following the rules is vitally important. You will get people who are who have certain personality DNA types, in certain roles in your business, without naming names or casting aspersions - who won't get this. They will constantly challenge us as work winning and bid writing people to try and get us to break the rules. “Oh, you'll be all right. Just stick these extra 500 words in” “Oh, you'll be all right, just put this appendix in.” You won't.
I used to work with YPO, the biggest procurement body other than crown commercial services in the UK. They receive around 8000 bids a year from suppliers across their frameworks covering anything from professional services and insurance, to the provision of stationary and furniture to the public sector. 2000 of those submissions go in the bin because they're non compliant. 2000! They're delivered late. They don't answer the question. They provide materials that haven't been asked for. They're over word count. They don't provide the samples that are asked for of the product or materials. They break the rules.
It's so vitally important that we follow the rules. It's incredibly boring, but you lose 100% of the bids you're non compliant on.
Just imagine on those 2000 YPO submissions a year that went in the bin - all of that cost of effort, that heartache - people probably working late nights and weekends to pull those documents together. It was completely wasted effort. It's ridiculous.
When I was at mace, the scorecards of all of our people in the bid function had 100% success rate on PQQs and 100% success rate on compliance as a measure. If they had any compliance failure, they got a one in their appraisal - which was basically signal to go and find a job somewhere else. We bidding professionals are absolutely accountable for compliance. We need to get other appropriate people in the business to sign off everything - to review everything that we do. We shouldn't actually, in the end, be responsible for anything in my view, but we bidding professionals,need to make that happen. We need to make sure that everything is safe. Everything is checked. We followed the rules. Otherwise it's us in the box seats when it goes wrong I'm afraid.
It's really dull, but compliance is everything.
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