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Why
RTD? |
Everyone wants to save time and money.
However, skimping on the development of a tender document does not
make sense – unless that is, you are not really interested in receiving
comprehensive vendor proposals that properly address your requirements.
A clearly written tender document that addresses not just the
customer’s concerns but also understands and addresses the normal
concerns that a supplier may have, goes a long way to ensuring that you
receive sensible and well-thought-out proposals.
Over the years we have written and
responded to many tender documents on behalf of our clients.
These have ranged from requests for proposals for quite unique
requirements to more simplistic outsourcing tenders. These latter all tended to need somewhat similar formats and
inclusions, the differences being the type of infrastructure being
supported and the services required.
In the early days we looked at each situation as a unique
situation, reusing what we could but, more often than not, having to
develop unique documents for each situation.
That is no longer the case. Technology standardisation and the commoditisation of
standard support services now means that we can reuse a large percentage
of textual information to speed up tender preparation in much the same way
that developers use reusable code to speed up application development.
Instead of RAD (Rapid Application Development) we call this
fast-track tender preparation RTD (Rapid Tender Development) and it can
save hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in the preparation
of tenders.
With
RTD you receive the benefit of years of research into what works and what
doesn’t in the preparation of tender documents.
Without fail every supplier that has responded to a tender document
that we produced has praised the clarity of the document, the
comprehensiveness of the information provided and the ease of its use.
This translates into less time wasted in questions and more time spent on
the response.
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| The RTD package |
RTD is a unique package that we have
developed to assist in the development of tenders for commodity
services. This package
includes:
Documentation
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A tender document (one hardcopy format, one electronic format on CD)
which includes templates and instructions for completion of every
section of information that should be included in the document.
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Standard text reflecting accepted practices is included where
practicable with explanations of the reasons and meanings for the
text.
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A package of service definitions (one hardcopy format, one
electronic format on CD) for over 40 of the most common commodity IT
services. These service
definitions are in template form and can be changed to suit
individual organisations. The
service definitions are complete and comprehensive and can be used
as the basis of any future SLA thus saving future negotiation and
contract drafting effort.
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Standard questions that should enable an organisation to properly
compare responses from a number of suppliers.
All questions are accompanied by an explanatory note as to
why the question should be asked and what the customer should look
for in the responses
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Training
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One full day training course for up to 10 attendees on how to define
services to avoid future conflict and ensure ease of delivery
monitoring and management.
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One full day training course for up to 10 attendees on the
development of a tender document using the template and the
customer’s specific environment as training tools
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Consultancy
3 days of consultancy which can be used
as preferred. Some uses of
this consultancy include:
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Assistance with the customisation of the service definitions to suit
your specific environment. You
would be amazed at what can be achieved in 3 days.
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Assistance with the development of new service definitions for
services that are not considered to be commodities and therefore
templates have not been provided. These services are usually unique to an organisation’s
specific requirements and so require some degree of analysis before
a comprehensive service definition can be developed.
We can help with that.
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Assistance with the customisation of the tender document –
especially in those instances where some aspect of your requirements
differs to the standard.
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Calculation of likely cost range.
We have comparative data and formulas that we can use to
arrive at a likely cost range for the services being requested.
This should give you some sort of idea as to what to expect
and, if any response is way outside of the range, what to check more
closely.
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There
is a fixed price for the package which includes everything above.
You get 2 experienced consultants, both
qualified to Masters level, each with over 38 years of experience in IT
including IT management, delivering training and helping you for the first
week – on your site, anywhere in Australia and New Zealand, for one
fixed price.
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| Standards complied with |
The tender document itself complies
with:
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The Australian Standard Code of Ethics and Procedures for the
Selection of Consultants
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The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority: Prudential Standard
for Outsourcing and related Guidance Notes on Managing Outsourcing
Arrangements
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The Australian Standards AS 8015 to 8017 Corporate Governance for
ICT and Services Management |
The Service Definitions have been
“ITILised” wherever practicable, always bearing in mind that ITIL is a
library of standard processes that don’t always easily convert to
commercial services. However,
all services are defined using standard ITIL nomenclature and definition
of terms
All
documentation is prepared using MS Word and Excel. One hard copy of all
documentation is provided and one electronic copy on CD.
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| The
Benefits to you |
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You can “kick-start” the development of your tender and
associated service definitions and save considerable time.
Our experience has shown that each service takes a minimum of
8 hours to properly define (even with teams of technical experts who
said that it shouldn’t take anywhere near that time!).
We have included a package of over 40 comprehensively defined
commodity IT technology support services.
This equates to at least 320 hours (or 8 person weeks) of
effort – RTD cuts this time considerably.
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You benefit from years of research into what works and what
doesn’t – from both a customer and a supplier point of view.
You therefore don’t have to reinvent the wheel and can
focus on what is most important – your specific requirements and
your specific information.
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The tender templates contain everything you need to know to produce
a professional and comprehensive tender document – and you don’t
have to worry about what should and shouldn’t be there – we have
done that worrying for you.
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The tender documents and service definitions are compliant with the
most applicable standards thus assuring a level of accepted quality.
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The questions section includes all appropriate questions – all you
have to do is add to them or delete as appropriate.
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| Time saved |
If we were to be retained to develop a
tender “from scratch” without the benefit of reusable information we
would have said (in the past) that the job would take up to 4 months.
That would include all analysis, information gathering etc as well
as the development of the documents and service definitions themselves.
RTD can cut this time down to weeks not months for the development
of tenders for IT technology support services.
Now
I know you may say that you have heard that it should only take a few
weeks anyway – and we have been involved in responding to some of those
tenders. Without exception
they have been less than adequate. They
have resulted in large amounts of wasted supplier time whilst they try to
fill in the gaps and understand cryptic, ambiguous one-liners that do more
to confuse than to clarify. Its
no wonder that some responses disappoint the customer. RTD will not only
save time in the development of the tender – it saves valuable supplier
time. This time is more
profitably spent by the supplier in responding to your requirements –
not trying to decipher them in the first place. |
