The business opportunity!

SMEs have a huge business potential in form of government tenders. For small and medium sized businesses, these government tenders are very attractive opportunities for converting them into revenue generating business. To top it, these government tenders also offer a chance of repeat business.

The Misses that lead to SMEs failure in winning the government tenders

Now, if these government tenders are so attractive and can help the SMEs get very handsome business revenue line, why most of the SMEs are not able to win these government tenders. We have listed down few of the common mistakes made by SMEs, which makes them lose out on the government tenders.

  1. Unclear bid proposal document – A lot of SMEs fail at this level only. Government authorities go through all the proposal documents that they receive, to shortlist the best ones. SMEs end up messing up at this stage majorly due to an unclear proposal that they submit. A lot of SMEs are also first time applicants with little or no prior experience or expertise to be able to create a well-crafted bid proposal. Clear communication is the first stage of getting shortlisted. As an SME, you must ensure that your or your team members writing skills are good, with decent command on the English language, as that is the mode of communication when submitting the bid proposal document.

  2. Tender requirements not met – At times, SMEs end up picking up those government tenders, for whom these SMEs are not the most relevant prospect. This means SMEs end up choosing the wrong government tender, wherein they don’t fit the bill. To put it in layman language, let’s say that the released government tender is about getting a building structure made, but you are offering them cement. So clearly you are not meeting the requirements of the released government tender, and hence would be rendered useless with all your efforts and money gone down the drain. At BidAssist, we help SMEs tackle with this problem. We are one of the most comprehensive aggregators which curate tender information from all government authorities and make it as easy as google search, to discover new tenders. While tender247 or tendertiger or any other aggregation website charges you certain amount of fee for the regions and keywords that you select; BidAssist lets you discover government tenders across all regions and as many keywords you want, absolutely FREE of cost. BidAssist also helps you to do an advanced search with filters like preferred regions, tender value, tender authority and specific keywords like metal, fabrication, steel etc.

  1. Incomplete proposal document – Half-baked cake is never something that you will do down your throat, even if the finest of ingredients have been used in its preparation. Since the cake hasn’t been baked completely, it’s just not worth having even a single bite. Similarly, if you don’t provide all the information as requested for, in the government tender, then you are at high risk of losing out. While you are drafting the proposal document, it’s important to keep a handy checklist to ensure you don’t miss out on providing any information that’s required in the government tender document.

  2. Supporting facts not covered – As an SME, you will have always have one clear unique selling proposition or USP of your company. Many a times, SMEs end up writing about a lot of factors like these in their proposal bid document, just to look befitting for the requirements mentioned in the government tender. But all of these statements don’t matter at all, if they have not been supported with valid factual documents. End of the day, the government authorities will pick only that bidder whose statements are supported with factual data and not just big claims written in the proposal document.

  3. Pricing – Pricing is one the most important factors which can highly impact the chances of winning or losing a government tender for any participating SME. If the pricing offered by the SME in their bid proposal is not competitive enough, it puts them in high risk category of losing out in the bidding process. But this also does not mean that if an SME puts across very low pricing, that will guarantee them a win in the bidding process of the government tender. The proposal offer needs to be a fine balance of value for money and competitive pricing for the tendering authority and a profitable business proposition for the SME if they win the government tender.

  4. Administrative inefficiency – These are very small yet very common errors made by the participating SME, when submitting their bid proposal in response to the government tender. If SMEs don’t ensure to submit the tender proposal document before the final deadline or closing date of proposal submission for the open government tender, they end up missing out on even participating in the government tender bidding procedure. At times, they end up missing the tender submission deadline, or even worse miss out on signing across all the tender proposal document pages, and submit the bid proposal document. These are very small but very critical things, because missing out on these, they make the SME miss to even participate in the bid.

We hope that this article helped you analyze your own situation, and learn from examples and situations we put out in front of you. BidAssist team would be more than happy to connect with you and help you further in this regard or help you with any other queries regarding government tenders.

Reach out to us on 18001029586 or you may write to us at contact@bidassist.com