DEFENCE
Defence Bids and Tenders: Best practice and winning strategies Best practice in defence bids and tenders is constantly evolving. Jason Cooney, Director of Tsaks Consulting, outlines some best practice strategies that companies can employ to secure contracts both in New Zealand and globally.
Defence contracts are almost always complex, usually high in value (sometimes into the Billions of dollars), and most certainly competitive. A range of factors beyond the bid and tender itself come into play including geopolitical ties and pre-tender and capture planning activities.
Jason Cooney is a bid and tender writing specialist. He is the founder of Tsaks Consulting (formerly The Tender Team), which operates in Australia, New Zealand, Greece and the UK.
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Win Themes The development of win themes starts from the capture planning stage of a client. You need to assess the opportunity, what problem needs to be solved, how your product or service (be it a submarine or military uniform) will solve that problem, and what differentiates you from your competitors. When assessing what differentiates your product or service from your competitors, it’s important for you to look at it from the perspective of the procurer. When it comes time to tender, and your win-themes may be evolving and developing, you need to review the RFP documentation in detail and develop and tailor your win themes to the opportunity. Given the complexity of defence tenders, it’s sometimes difficult to develop and convey your key selling points consistently. That’s why your win themes need to encapsulate your key selling points, and they need to be interwoven into all different aspects of your response. For example, let’s assume you are bidding for a contract for the provision of electronic jamming equipment with a focus on attack drones. One of your win themes may be the simplicity of the system and ease of training for key personnel to operate the system.
You need to go beyond just conveying this point in the response to training. It needs to be incorporated into the executive summary, your company history, experience and track record, safety and other aspects of the response. The evaluation panel need to all walk out with the same key messages, even if they have been reviewing different parts of your response. Graphics and Infographics Graphics have long been considered the norm for bids and tenders in the defence industry. Infographics, however, have now become the norm. It’s important that infographics are well thought through. There’s no use in littering a proposal document with graphics and infographics that haven’t been well thought through and don’t provide sufficient detail. In addition, detail is generally provided in the writing. What goes into an effective infographic in a defence tender? Firstly, where complex engineering or technical solutions have been developed, an infographic is a great opportunity to convey these in a simple and easy to understand manner. For example, the specifications and unique capabilities of a fighter jet can be summarised and conveyed using an infographic. Secondly, you need to ensure an infographic is well thought through and connected and expanded upon in the text. For example, the fuel capacity and range of the fighter jet may be detailed in the infographic, however, on the pages following the infographic, you would be wise to include a page Line of Defence
