What is Storyboarding?

The storyboard phase of a bid is a key element of the planning stage. It is the point where you study all the available client information from the ITT, site visit and client presentations and produce answer structures that the writers can follow. Storyboarding is the process of analysing the question, scoring criteria and win themes that are key to the tenderers overall narrative. Storyboarding is instrumental for aligning the vision of the bid team, creating a compelling pitch, understanding the Employer’s vision for the project, and much more, focussing on what the client has ‘asked for’ rather than what we think the client ‘should know’

In order for a bid to be successful it has to achieve the highest score during evaluation of your ITT submission. As this can be a mix of quality questions and pricing, it is important to understand the criteria the client will use to evaluate the offer, which has a big impact on the way the answers and bid document return is structured. Ellipsis International Solutions can work with you to construct story boards for each question for the bid team to follow to specifically target the answers to the Employers key drivers within each question

Knowledge bank

At Ellipsis we work with our clients to develop their ‘Knowledge Bank’ and how this can be used to increase bid performance and efficiency. Essentially, a Knowledge Bank is part of bid document depository, stored digitally, in which you store everything you might need to bid for work and help respond to EOI, PQQ and ITT’s. This could include:

• Policies and procedures

• Accreditations and certificates

• Company CV’s (subject to the restrictions of GDPR)

• Case studies that you anticipate will have relevance to the tenders you choose to bid for

• Responses that you frequently use in your previous tenders

Bid writing

You may have been through the EOI and PQQ phase of a project opportunity and you have now received an ITT.  You have found a tender that you would like to bid for, so what comes next in the bid management process?

At this stage, it is likely that you have had an outline understanding of brief or scope of works by attending a pre-bid tender briefing, or even scanned the requirements and briefly read the specification. At this juncture, it is time to take an in-depth look at the details. Before you commit to the cost of tendering you need to be sure that you are match the criteria required and so are eligible and that you feel you possess the required background, experience, and information. However, it is vital that all the specification requirements are thoroughly reviewed and assessed as there could be a requirement that you cannot meet, such as turnover or insurance levels. Failing to fully read and digest the requirements could result in wasting precious resource time.

At Ellipsis International Solutions we can help by breaking down the requirements of the specification and summarising or creating a ‘precis’ of key points of the works, specification and proposed contract which will allow you to firstly establish your ability to create a compliant bid and estimate resource input timescales and identify any areas requiring immediate clarification by the Employer. The word count for the required responses (if known) will help you estimate how much time needs to be assigned to each question.

Timely Document Collation

If the responses require evidence of case studies, testimonials, CV’s or financial accounts etc., you may need to liaise with other departments, this is where the benefits of being able to utilise the ‘Knowledge Bank’ come in to play. Ellipsis can help coordinate these actions to make sure you leave plenty of time to collate the required documents. It is in no-one’s interest to rush this process at the last minute because you did not apply the right resource at the appropriate time to compile the documents. It may be necessary and helpful to set a slightly earlier deadline for your team to ensure you are ready in time for the final tender document collation and submission.

In bid management, meeting deadlines is an integral part of the role. If the deadline is missed, buyers do not have to evaluate your bid. Additionally, asking for extra time without a valid reason never looks good. This makes the buyer nervous about your scheduling skills which will undoubtedly be a key factor on the contract.

In order to effectively manage your time, we recommend developing a bid plan. The plan needs to be standardised but also adaptable to accommodate work that requires a short turnaround.

Writing the Quality / Technical Bid proposal 

Bid writing is a specialist skill and whilst it can be tempting to ask your operational team to pitch in with writing this will inevitably lead to lower scores against key criteria and reduce your probability of success. It is however essential that the proposal developed reflects how you intend to deliver the work you are tendering for. The Bid writer is therefore also a collaborator and investigator, drawing out from the wider team the key elements of the solution and then weaving these into a compelling narrative which gives the client confidence in your understanding of their vision as well as your technical ability to deliver the project. 

Ellipsis International Solutions’ Bid writers are experienced at working with our clients to ensure that the proposal that is written truly reflects the best image of your ability. The clients tender review team will often be few in number and have limited availability and will be reading multiple submissions, so it essential that the document is intuitively laid out, so they do not have to search for the critical information. They want to see the facts and the direct answers to their questions, that are transparent, so they are readily able to understand and digest them, therefore well constructed answers will help with achieving the highest scores.

Finalising and proof reading 

Once your written responses, supporting evidence and pricing are complete, it is time to check and thoroughly proof read. Failure to ensure a quality bid document may lead the client to consider whether the project execution will be the undertaken in the same manner and could reflect poorly in the overall scoring.  

Submitting the work without checking what you have done and moving onto the next bid proposal can lead to submission of errors and ultimately failure to secure the project. You will then have wasted all the time and resource spent analysing the opportunity, preparing, and crafting the responses for the sake of a few extra hours.

Ellipsis can provide the services to draft the bid submission, support your bid writers, or resources for proof reading the documents. It is often useful that someone unattached to the project participates in proof reading as well because it is likely that they will find errors you have missed.