As anyone who has previously written a tender proposal will tell you, preparing for and then writing the proposal itself is no joke. It can take days just collecting all the information you need to successfully write a winning proposal. And then comes the actual writing part, which may even take more than a week, especially if you want it to be thorough, error-free and incorporate graphics and designing.
But if your business frequently submits tender proposals, repeating the same process over and over again can take up valuable time and money, not to mention pulling resources from different teams to create the proposal. In such cases, you may want to consider looking into creating a tender document template for your Australian business. Let’s find out why your business might be in need of creating a template for your tenders.
Save time and resources
Perhaps the most important benefit of all: having a tender document template saves a significant amount of time. Your employees could better use the time saved to do their actual jobs. Having a template that is ready to use, or one that may be adapted based on the individual situation, prevents you from having to collect the same information over and over again.
While it is true that like a cover letter for a job, your tender response should be customised based on the project you are applying for, there are several things that will remain the same, regardless of who you are sending the proposal to. Having a template will save you time spent recreating graphics, fixing formatting, rewriting an executive summary etc. Many times, it will be possible to simply edit the template based on the project and send it through,
Consistency
A business is known by the way it brands itself. When a company is sending several tender responses at or around the same time, it is important for all the responses to be consistent and concurrent with each other. For example, hard details, such as registered ABN, intellectual property rights, certifications and licences, and the company profile need to be the same across all applications. Having a template with all of these details prefilled reduces the margin of error and the risk of inconsistency.
Structure
While many tender requests come with a template that you’re required to fill in, many others don’t. Creating your own tender template even before you actively start sending out tender responses enables you to take out the time to really think through the structure of your proposal. Making sure that your responses don’t get overshadowed by poor design and formatting is just as important as writing a great response.
Good design, attractive graphics and clean formatting allow an evaluator to breeze through your response, eliminating any chances of miscommunication or confusion.
Professionalism
The best businesses know that the first impression a potential client has of a business is based on its branding and appearance. Even before the audience knows of what the business actually does, they may already have formed an opinion of the business based just on how it presents itself.
The same is true for tender responses. The appearance of your tender proposal plays a huge part in showing off your professionalism. Crisp, clean layouts, good colour schemes, excellent use of fonts, headings and graphics in addition to your responses all have an impact on how your business is perceived by the evaluators. And when the evaluator has to comb through hundreds of applications, anything that makes you stand out is a benefit.
Personalisation
Adding branding materials, logos, and graphics and stats all help cement your position as a business that knows what it is doing and knows how to appeal to a crowd. A document with just text looks drab, uninteresting and may even be glossed over. Add a touch of your brand’s personality to your tender proposal to immediately catch the attention of an assessor. Remember to treat a tender proposal like a business pitch to potential clients or stakeholders. You wouldn’t want your audience to fall asleep in the middle of your presentation!
But when you’re first stepping into the world of tendering, it can be difficult to know exactly what constitutes a good template. In such a case, to get help with setting up your tender document template, get in touch with a professional tender writing service in Australia. Not only do they have the experience of writing hundreds of tender proposals every year, but many of them have also previously been members of bid assessment committees, which gives them insight into how a proposal or template may be perceived by an evaluator.
Once you have your template sorted, you’re well on your way to submitting your first proposal!
