Project Tendering
A reader posted this, on Project tendering, after an article of ours.
Project Tendering, at places where you work, is not as easy as you might think.
If you could pull this off, it would be a great position to be in. It’s a real opportunity, therefore, to move away from IT contracting and develop a real business.
The problem is, that whether you are working with teams of cheap developers or doing the work yourself, you still have the same old problem with marketing.
So selling your services directly to clients and presenting yourself as a credible company is going to be the difficult bit.
Hiring Sales and Marketing People
Sure you can hire sales and marketing people and start tendering for projects. However, it takes more than that to get on an approved supplier list.
With my current client, the first step in getting on this list involves them looking at the companies’ financials.
This would be the show stopper for most of us. They wouldn’t touch the average contractor company because the turnover is too low.
There’s also the problem, however, that the suppliers list is full of friends of the senior managers. There’s not much you can do about that one.
IT Contractors Tendered for Project
Recently a group of IT contractors tried to tender for a project.
They are prepared to undercut the competition on a development project by about 50%. They could still make a very nice profit.
The project managers were happy with this, as they knew the contractors were the best people for the job. They’d been working with the business for over 2 years.
The software development outfits they work with are always delivering poorly documented buggy applications. The contractors usually end up sorting these out.
The Client would make a huge cost saving and end up with a better quality system with delivery on time.
The problem was they couldn’t get on the approved supplier list!
So project tendering is still a huge problem for IT Contractors.
