What are the key roles and responsibilities of a bid manager and how do you delegate them effectively?

Before bid is received from customer we should have proper strategy of actions like proper research on the client, IT Spend, New Trends of market and competitors in the market and what is the key hot buttons and pain points for which customer is seeking assistance for. Each and every bid received by the organization should undergo Go/No Go process to analyze and check the requirements of the RFP and whether it lands in the key sweet spots where organization wants to build their expertise. After getting approval of the opportunity from the respective stakeholders like Sales Head, Presales Head, Delivery and Practice team the ball should start to roll. A proper analysis of key tenants of RFP with how well we are technically qualified for it.

During this phase, the bid manager must consider conducting financial & legal assessments, especially in the case of a Federal RFP where numerous compliances are involved. Explore partnerships whenever possible; if participating in a consortium during the bidding process could bolster the standing. Innovation is essential, so checking the feasibility of how the integration of emerging technologies or their combination (Involve 3rd party software if required) can contribute to the better development of a solution from the technical team. Allocate resources wisely by considering cross-functional & if onsite/offshore combinations is allowed to quote aggressively & consider environmental impacts. Keep an eye on evaluation criteria.

The key role of a bid manager during this stage is to facilitate a Go/No-Go assessment, ensuring involvement of stakeholders with the relevant skills, experience and mandate. It’s important to take the team through a bank of relevant questions, keeping them focussed on each question, and answering each question objectively/honestly. It may be tempting to take an overly optimistic view of our position, and on the converse, deflate the strengths of competitors - it’s the bid manager’s job to manage this.

An opportunity assessment can take many forms. The idealistic narrative (left) is the utopia. The reality often is that the assessment is touched by many and a decision based on the voices of the few. This isn't a criticism but often we see Bid Management as a defined process when it isn't; and that's ok. A good Bid Manager recognises this and can and will adapt accordingly, but must lend their voice and experience to this part of the journey.

Ich bin nicht damit einverstanden, dass der Bid Manager das letzte Wort haben sollte. Es sollte immer im Team (auch auf h?heren Management Ebenen) entschieden werden. Der Umgang mit der Vergabe h?ngt doch auch von der Bedeutung des Kunden/des Projekts ab. Sicherlich sind wir dazu verpflichtet, die Daten zu prüfen und ggf. Machbarkeit, verbundene Risiken und ggf. auch auf Legal Department Themen deutlich hinzuweisen. Manchmal bleibt ?nur“ eine qualifizierte Absage zur (weiteren) Teilnahme an dem Vergabevorgang - eine Option, die ggf. auch weiterführende Gespr?che hervorrufen kann.

Bid Strategy is the effective milestone which needs to be established and a Bid Manager should have a proper understanding of the RFP, Technical Terms, Commercial Terms and Organizational requirements which needs to be fulfilled. Once we have a clarity from our side we can define the overall goals, themes, differentiators, hot buttons, case studies and implementation experience etc. to other stakeholders. Bid Manager can take help of Capture Manager, Market Research and Sales team to take care of the few important items which can run parallel to the RFP. Each stakeholder should have a clear understanding of his roles and responsibilities.

The bid manager must facilitate development of a customer-centric, differentiated suite of strategies, leveraging insights and expertise of a diverse and relevant mix of stakeholders. This will see development of a matrix of solution features, benefits and evidence mapped against each clients goal and issue/need. This matrix must then serve as the cheat sheet for solution developers, writers, editors, reviewers etc.

IMO the primary responsibility of a bid manager is facilitation of relevant SMEs, harnessing insights, experience and expertise of the client, their needs, industry trends, competitive intelligence and knowledge of in-house solutions/differentiators, to craft winning strategies. Strategies must best align to client needs and pain points I.e. most closely satisfy the technical, commercial and contractual dimensions of the client’s brief over the contract or project lifecycle. The bid manager keeps SMEs on track, using internal smarts and market knowledge as ‘enablers’ for a customer-centric, fit for purpose solution - an over baked technical or commercial offering looks good on paper but won’t get us across the line.

Keeping the bid strategy streamlined and well documented is what it takes to craft a winning proposal. For example: Gating call for all bid and proposal management opportunities. First Draft Review session Final Draft Review session Proposal Submission and Record-Keeping, along with compliance and responsive matrix, plus all documents for the bid for future reference. Maintenance of Artifacts and reusable repository All these steps vary from organisation to organisation.

O Gerente de licita??es deve estar sempre no controle geral. Desde a capta??o do edital, para assim, ver quais preg?es/processos irá seguir a diante, e dependendo fazer uma análise dos processos que n?o participaram, para montar novas estratégias. Sempre estar disposto a se especializar. Após a capta??o do edital, fazer um estudo no mesmo. Montar estratégias de porcentagens que sempre ir?o mudar durante a sess?o de lances. Tem que ter "cartas" em suas tabelas de excel para fazer o "jogo" mudar. A licita??o n?o é apenas isso, muitas vezes após a assinatura da ATA, alguns órg?o n?o pedem nada, eles também tem muitas demandas e acabam deixando de lado alguma ata. Extrema importancia a visita ao órg?o para prospec??o de empenho/of.

Planning is the most important task which a Bid manager has to do because he has work backwards from the date of submission and their are many moving items with proper coordination and follow-up's required with many teams like Delivery, Practice, Legal, Finance etc. A bid plan is the one such document which has all the sections of the RFP with proper ownership of them assigned after discussing with all stakeholders in the Kickoff Call. It also includes the key instructions of the customer of what is the page limit of each section, Scope, Financials and by when the project should be completed. Bid Manager should track all the deliverables and publish RAG status for bid-to senior management also in case of any issues in delivering the bid.

Bid Planning; keeping the plans simple, streamline, and well informed. Have a collectively agreed-upon plan and milestones with timeline to keep the process intact with deadlines. I follow to have a MOM shared with important timelines to all the stakeholders involved post-gate call to keep my bid plan streamlined and well informed to all the stakeholders.

Project planning and management is a fundamental skillset. IMO, Excel has all the muscle and flexibility you’ll need - it’s a live tracking tool. It’s important to list activities, lead responsibilities, due dates, traffic light for status tracking. I favour progress reviews with leads once/week, obviously depending on the overall timeline, thereby not going overboard with meetings, allowing reasonable periods for progress. Progress reviews must focus solely on short and sharp progress updates from leads, with an honest status update of each activity by the bid manager e.g. if the due date has been missed, log it as such. To avoid the hockey stick effect leading to 11th hour chaos, a bid manager must drive accountability for results.

When you are planning the bid timeline, make sure you leave some contingency for delays. Internal subject matter experts can contribute to these, if they don't make time for working on the tender. Asking people to diarise time in the BKO can mitigate this.

Bid managers work with so many Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), each with a deep knowledge of their subject. Yet SMEs are not always great or confident writers. These SMEs also have competing tasks they probably enjoy doing more than responding to RFPs. So it's up to the bid writer to help the SMEs feel comfortable and safe in their writing, while still editing the SME's writing to fit with the overall company and response tone of voice. This can be done via bite-sized training in cadence calls. The bid writer (and the account manager!) also needs to motivate the SMEs to write by the given deadline, despite their competing priorities.

Bid manager is involved in coordinating and overseeing the Bid artefacts built as per requirements of the RFP. For this we need to assign the various sections of the RFP to SME's of that domain so that we can get accurate and best content for that domain which is best in class and latest from technical and business point of view. Bid Manager has to keep a tight vigil on the content coming from SME's and needs to edit and fine tune content on the basis of RFP. Bid Manager has to proofread the final content and customize the content from the requirements asked in the RFP. He has to be on top of everything and needs to fine tune and edit the final bid document. His responsibility is also to format, brand and package with feedback and guidance.

Otherwise known as 'herding chickens' - It's critical that responses are delegated correctly. So, we know what we want done, we must make sure the 'who' part is also right. Delegation through experience helps but what's most important is to listen. Consider if through delegation we're asking too much of a specific individual? They might have the knowledge, but have they ever had to write in such a way before? What tools can we given them that supports them on their journey in creating a response e.g. have we written something similar before or is the layout and expectations clear? Listening to those delegates at this stage is vital as their comments will provide useful insight into what you're likely to get back from them.

Though a bid manager should have the ability to craft a compelling narrative, this is not where he/she ought to be used for best value. Rather, the bid manager should provide a clear roadmap/ cheat sheet of strategies that have been developed and agreed with the team. This guide should include clear mapping of strategies against sections of the proposal, so win strategies resonate throughout the response, in the right places. This is to be used by writers and SMEs to develop draft content, and ultimately by reviewers. The bid manager enhances value by editing and finessing responses, ensuring customer centricity through integration of win strategies into messaging, and a good balance of text to graphics, technical to non-tech content etc.

I agree the bid manager could be expected to coordinate and oversee the bid writing but……. It’s far more likely they need help in this area which largely depends on bid structure and whether a bid director and commercial manager are available to lead strategy and pricing? Furthermore not many bid managers are good at writing which means those that are can get overloaded and will need support from a proposals manager to coordinate the writing effort.

I disagree that the bid manager should always lead the presentation. In many industries and organisations that may be true. And the bid manager should be responsible for leading the design, rehearsal etc of the presentation. But in some organisations / industries / bids the customer wants to see the people who will deliver the service leading the presentation, or top organisation management presenting to show the bidding organisation's commitment to the contract being bid for. So the bid manager shouldn't blindly follow this as a 'rule'. I'd suggest she review the situation, customer preferences and available people within the organisation. Sometimes others are more appropriate to lead the presentation.

One of the most important task of bid manager is to prepare and deliver the bid presentation for further discussions with client. His focus will be on designing the content according to the requirements, rehearsing, selecting and coaching the presenters. He should also ensure that presentation is professional and custom made to the requirements. Bid Manager should be able to handle any questions, concerns from client. He should display confidence, credibility and excitement in dealing with the pressures. He also can delegate so that he can focus energy on other important tasks in bid but should always be there to lead and facilitate presentation.

The role of Bid Manager is to learn and evaluate the outcome of bid. For this, he needs to collect and analyze the feedback from client, team, various stakeholders etc. He also has to do SWOT analysis of the bid because he should understand the full landscape of the bid. Main lesson of Bid Manager is to document ,share the lessons learnt, recommend the best practices and what recommendations for future bids on what has gone wrong with the present bid. Effort of the Bid Manager should be remove inefficiencies in the process and focus should be on the continuous improvement of the bid process so that the earlier issues can be rectified and we religiously align with the best practices defined by APMP/Shipley.

It can be useful for the bid manager to also review the bid before the outcome is known. She can gain a lot of insight around what went well in putting the bid together, the process, inputs etc by getting her team together soon after submission to give their input into what went well and what could be improved. By doing this the focus isn't tempered by whether the bid 'won' (underlying implication it was good), or 'lost' (underlying implication something went wrong). Post result reviews are also essential for all the reasons given by others

There's a role the Bid Manager plays that can get overlooked as it plays in the outer edges of what needs to be done - it's a belief that we must do what's necessary to get the job done. This might be managing governance or risk, but equally it might be engaging those who are disengaged (either too busy or lack belief). This can take a considerable amount of time and effort to overcome.

Bid manager role is of orchestrator where he is the most important person for the anchoring the whole bid. Bid Manager is the Project Manager of the whole bid and it is he who will drive the bid to completion with the help of Solution Architects and Sales Leads. He is a single point of contact for the bid who knows all the things of the Bid. He is thorough with the knowledge of the RFP and what customer is seeking. Each and every proposal is different and the technologies which customer is seeking are also different. Bid Manager should be able to understand the domain, industry and challenges faced by customer to add value to the bid. Bid Manager should personalize each bid to cater to the specific needs of the customer.

Here are some considerations that are not covered in the article: - Making sure there's a proper handover from capture to bid - Inspiring and motivating team members - Working with the bid sponsor to drive accountability - Supporting negotiation - Supporting handover to implementation/delivery team

People management skills are often overlooked when talking about managing 'a bid'. Bid managers are not just managing the process. They are managing people. Whether a team reporting to them as line manager, others from the bid team (such as bid writers), and those who may even be senior to them in other departments (sales, Subject Matter Experts, senior managers signing off the governance elements of the bid). Without the skills, traits, and experience to manage people effectively, not even the slickest bid process will result in a bid manager regularly winning bids.

Gerente de Licita??es tem o papel estratégico para os negócios e para com a área atuando de forma humanizada procurando trazer bons resultados nas condu??es das licita??es e sendo bom líder para equipe, inspira??o e exemplo de conhecimento para o desenvolvimento de todos.