A tender spreadsheet with a deadline
A large customer's procurement team issues its annual packaging tender. It is a spreadsheet with hundreds of lines: their item codes, descriptions, dimensions, board specs, annual volumes and delivery profiles. Some lines are products you already make for them. Some are made by a competitor. Some are new. The deadline is fixed and close.
The commercial team and estimators drop other work for a fortnight, match lines by hand, estimate the unknown ones, and argue about margins in the last day.
Every line is matched by hand
Tender spreadsheets use the buyer's codes and descriptions, not yours, and their spec information is often incomplete or slightly different from yours. Matching each line to an existing product, and estimating the rest, is detailed work that must be done quickly under pressure.
- Buyer codes and descriptions differ from your product records.
- Specs in the tender are incomplete or inconsistent.
- Existing products need current costs, not last year's price.
- New lines need estimating in a hurry.
- Margins are decided line by line in a rush.
What a rushed tender costs
A rushed tender is priced inconsistently: some lines too high, losing volume you could have won, some too low, winning work at a loss for a year. Errors in matching lead to lines priced against the wrong spec. Other customers' work suffers while the team is focused on the tender. And the knowledge of how the last tender was priced is rarely reused.
Tenders also reward consistency. A buyer comparing suppliers across hundreds of lines notices when your prices for similar products jump around, and that can undermine confidence in the whole submission, even where your pricing on the important lines was competitive.
Tender pricing we build
- The tender spreadsheet is imported and its columns mapped once per buyer, so next year's tender is quicker.
- Each line is matched to existing products using the buyer's codes, descriptions and dimensions, with confidence shown, and a person confirms uncertain matches.
- Matched lines are costed from current specifications and material prices, with volumes and delivery profiles from the tender.
- Unmatched lines are grouped for estimators, with similar past jobs suggested to speed up estimating.
- Your margin rules are applied by product type, volume band or strategic importance, and the commercial team can adjust any line or group.
- The priced lines are written back into the buyer's template, with a summary of totals, margins and lines flagged for attention.
| Line type | Handled now | Handled with tender pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Existing product | Found and repriced by hand | Matched and costed from current data |
| Similar to past job | Estimated from scratch | Precedent suggested |
| New product | Estimated in a rush | Queued for estimators with context |
| Margin decision | Line by line | Rules, then adjustments |
| Returning the tender | Copied into template | Written back automatically |
Tenders priced with time to think
The mechanical work of matching and costing is done quickly, leaving the commercial team time to decide strategy. Pricing is consistent across lines. Estimators focus on the genuinely new lines. And the tender, its pricing and the outcome are kept, so next year starts from what you learned.
Is tender season a scramble?
- Tenders take the commercial team away for weeks.
- Tender lines are matched to your products by hand.
- Existing products are priced from last year's rather than current costs.
- Margins are decided in a rush on the last day.
- Past tender pricing is hard to find and reuse.