Managing multiple stakeholders, deciphering what the buyer really wants, establishing what will get you the highest score, understanding the competition – there are a host of challenges to confidently submitting a bid. This is why we created the ADVANCE™ software to complement and underpin our bidder services.
The ADVANCE™ software has been specially designed to support your bidding process – it’s a unique solution to overcome the challenges you’ll face as a bidder. With ADVANCE™ your processes are more efficient, giving you more time to concentrate on the quality of your bid.
The software:
- Delivers time savings and process efficiency: it provides a central place to manage your bid submissions, regardless of where in the world your team is.
- Allows you to submit bids with the highest chance of success: set target scores against the questions and refine and review your answers until you have absolute confidence in your bid.
- Integrates with AWARD®: de-mystifying how your bid will be seen by an evaluator in AWARD®
As an ADVANCE™ user you’re fully supported by the Commerce Decisions team, with a bank of expert consultants, as well as training courses to keep you up to speed with best practice user tips.
The ADVANCE™ suite includes a range of flexible modules to create the perfect solution for you. Take a look below at the modules available.
See what your submission will look like to evaluators before you submit
As a bidder where the authority is using AWARD®, you want to see what your submission will look like to evaluators (prior to submission), giving you confidence that you are submitting the best possible bid. ADVANCE™ allows you to do this with a simple import function.
That said, the ADVANCE™ tool has been built agnostically to help support you whether you are bidding into AWARD® or non-AWARD® opportunities; making it as easy as possible to extract data in a meaningful manner in order to successfully submit an electronic based bid. As a bidder, it is important to understand the weightings and marking structure. Whether the buying authority is using AWARD® or not, the published marking structure can be set up in ADVANCE™, allowing bidding teams to establish a winning position based on the rules of the procurement set by the authority. ADVANCE™ also enables you to track and measure how your answers are progressing against the agreed answer plan facilitating multiple reviews (either pre or post bid submission) against the marking structure regardless of how mature your answer planning is.
Quickly determine whether you can actually win, and therefore whether you should go ahead with your bid
ADVANCE™ will help bring together all of the different variables of your bid, in order to plot out and visualise the different scenarios. Our team is an independent pair of eyes, and can help you in this decision-making process; supported by ADVANCE™, we will help you to get clear insight as to which bid opportunities are worth going after as well as ensuring your team is more effective on the bids they do go after. ADVANCE™ will help provide instant clarity on the procurement by importing the question structure set. From this, you will be able to identify the key challenges and decisions early on, helping to establish where this bid will effectively be won or lost.
The visualisation in ADVANCE™ will help you to understand which solutions aren’t viable in terms of winning; for example, eliminating the solutions that have unnecessary “gold plating” in them. ADVANCE™ will also help you to analyse all of your solution options and to select the solution that not only provides the highest chance of success but also optimises the bottom line by taking into account the various cost constraints. You will be able to bring together all of the different variables in order to plot out the different scenarios, including being able to map out what your competitors might do based on known intelligence. This analysis will help you to put the best possible solution forward based on all of the variables; defending against any internal challenges to lower the price, safe in the knowledge that this will not actually increase the chances of winning.
Improve your bid with a thorough review on whether your team has appropriately answered the questions
ADVANCE™ facilitates an independent review of key answers from the bid, enabling the marking of your draft bid response and highlighting areas for improvement. ADVANCE™ supports you with a clear review and analysis function, the results of which can be fed into a final document review as needed. The Red Team review is typically your final opportunity to score/review and improve your draft bid before it’s submitted; it is critical in ensuring a thorough review of your current answers, assign any last minute improvements and/or do a final moderation on the answers that will be in the final bid submission.
Review what you submitted against the reality of the results and the submissions of the other bidders
Often overlooked, going through the process of a retrospective review can identify weaknesses in your bidding processes, highlighting areas of strength and for improvement, and ensuring that you are in a better position ahead of the next bid. Whether you have won or lost, making sure that you know why is critical to your future success.