It is essential that any organisation, and its various components, plan ahead, and the function of bidding is no different. Planning ahead enables the bid function (or any function for that matter) to ensure it has the appropriate skills and resources available as and when needed, so that they are optimised, and deliver the best possible outcomes and return on investment. It also reduces the ‘where did that ITT / RFP come from’ moments that happen all too often.
Planning ahead should be relatively simple, as any organisation should know when their existing contracts are due for competitive renewal (enabling them to start work on the rebid strategy well in advance), with the same applying to the contracts (held by the competition) that they want to win. There might be new contracts coming to market, and sales / business development should have sight of those. We all know when the next UK general election is, for example, and the campaigns started the day the last election finished. As I said, simple!
So why doesn’t this happen in many cases? Primarily for two reasons; poor internal communications (sales / service delivery / bid) and secondly, because people don’t make the time to do it.
So what needs to change? Quite obviously, communication between all the interest parties, who need to make time to review and document all the above (rebids, competitive targets, new business), and communicate it to the business. More planning equals less surprises!