Partner Article

Tendering in the event industry

Anthony Crerar of The R&B Group explores tendering processes in the event industry, and asks: are you on the inside track?

Many years ago I went to a seminar on tendering. It was quite unusual in its day and I think it was probably free! I doubt I would have gone if it wasn’t. 15 years later I probably get a couple of invitations per week to attend a seminar, workshop or presentation in how to win tenders. I have been to the odd one, even paid to be there, but not much has changed; it’s still pretty difficult to be good at winning tenders on merit alone! In fact I clearly remember challenging the presenter all those years ago regarding the fairness of the process with a statement along the lines of “if I don’t know that I am on the inside track, then someone else probably is”. He knew what I meant and I honestly believe that in the majority of cases that still holds true today.

So what are the difficulties? Well firstly, the industry I operate in is a fairly technical and rather unusual. Buyers struggle to know sufficient about audio visual equipment and service to engage in meaningful communication about their requirements. As a result we are often required to hold a lengthy discussion or site visit to identify a specification and produce a solution and proposal, which is then used by the client’s procurement team to produce the tender specification. We then get out specification back and have to quote for it all over again, along with any other interested or invited parties.

If we haven’t helped the client create the tender we generally find out about opportunities via one of the plethora of procurement portal websites, most of which require annual subscription. There are some good sites and services which syndicate the information from lots of other sources but you will need to maintain a careful watch on several streams to be sure you don’t miss anything. On Hoults Yard, Newcastle, where we are based, we are currently exploring a way to create a united identity for the 40 plus creative businesses based here to share access to these tender portals rather than all paying individually.

Average contract values for events we tender for tend to be less than £50k, sometimes a lot less. Recently I was asked to jump through PQQ and ITT for a £6,000 contract. Madness! All too often an overly onerous tendering model is used… the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut. They’re also often full of an acronyms that the first time tender needs to get to grips with - that’s Pre-Qualification Questionnaire and Invitation To Tender in case you were wondering.

Another tendering exercise was managed for our client by a third party agency. I have no idea what they charged for the delay and confusion that their lack of understanding brought to the party but I bet it wasn’t cheap!
Then there is the assessment criteria which are increasingly published by the buyer. It seems there are lots of things that they consider when evaluating responses, often based around the existence or otherwise of some obscure policy to control the consumption of green paperclips at the whistle-blowers sub-committee meeting about the sustainable bribery strategy. Oh and price generally comes in somewhere, usually with a rating of less than 30%

And sometimes a seemingly great evaluation isn’t enough as demonstrated by Compete For where we have regularly scored 95% when 96% is need to progress to second stage! Being 300 miles from London costs that vital few percent and it’s game over!

Most business sectors will have a bigger tradition for tendering on an altogether grander level, justifying the cost of one or more people doing nothing else. At R&B Group we will always keep one eye on tender opportunities but for the time being targeted selling within our key sectors and geographies is probably a quick means to a higher end margin.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by R&B Group .