Decide what to bid before the deadline decides for you
Most companies bid too much of the wrong work and too little of the right work, because the decision is made late, by feel, by whoever is in the room. Bid / no-bid puts the same eight questions to every pursuit, says what decided the answer, and puts the decision on a date with a name against it.
the less certain the work, the more they pay for uncertainty and the more of your books they expect to see
Eight factors, one score out of 100
Bid / no-bid is under Capture in the menu. Every pursuit on your pipeline is scored on eight factors: technical fit, past performance, the contract vehicle, the customer relationship, the competition, your price position, compliance readiness and resource availability. Each is scored from what is on file and from your team's own answers on the pursuit, and the eight are weighted into one score.
A factor with nothing on file and no answer is left out and said to be unscored. It is never given a middle mark to make the total look complete, and every row says how many of the eight it was scored on.
- Weights set once for the account by the owner or a manager
- Every reason is a sentence about a figure on file
- Seventy and over is pursue, fifty and over is pursue with conditions
a missing requirement costs the bid; an awkward one costs nothing
Pursue, pursue with conditions, or walk away
Each pursuit gets a recommendation with the reasons that decided it, the day the decision is due and the person who makes it. The day comes from the response date and the bid lead time your account sets, ten days unless you change it. The record's view and your team's view are shown side by side, and a pursuit where they part is marked.
When the decision is made, recording it writes the Bid gate review the pursuit already has, and that moves its stage. Hold is a fourth answer: no decision yet. Every review is kept, so a pursuit shows each time it was decided and what was said.
- What is waiting, what is late and what is due inside two weeks
- What was decided this quarter: how many to pursue and how many to walk away
- Exported to Excel with the score and the reasons
the filter nobody else offers is the last one
Why the reasons matter more than the number
A score with no reasons is a guess with a decimal point. Each factor here says what it found: whether your codes match the work, whether you have won at this office before, whether you hold the vehicle it is bought through, who you know at the buying office, how crowded the field is and how strong the incumbent, how your price sits against what the work went for, what stops you bidding, and who on your team would carry it.
So the conversation in the gate review is about the factor that decided it, not about whether the total feels right. And because every pursuit is asked the same questions, a quarter of decisions can be read side by side.
Where it stops
Bid / no-bid comes with every paid plan. It reads the pursuits on your pipeline, so a notice you have not tracked is not scored. The score puts the same questions to every pursuit; it is not a forecast of winning, and the decision is always your team's. What the federal record cannot hold, such as how well you know a buyer, comes from your team's answers on the pursuit.
Related
- Capture plans NewEvery pursuit and its plan, the brief from the record and the plan you write.
- Competitive intelligence NewThe companies behind the competition factor.
- Pipeline and calendarWhere a pursuit lives, and its gate reviews.
- Facilities and capabilities NewWhat the compliance factor reads you against.
- The platform NewWhere this sits among the eight parts of the product.
See who was last awarded in your NAICS
Every code, every buying office, every vendor and every recompete, organized from the federal record and read nightly. Open it with a plan.