Clear and effective bidding processes and documents

Client. Public organization

Vision. To facilitate access to competitive bids by optimizing our client’s organizational efficiency.

Our Mission

Simplify contracts and other procurement documents by developing a clear, shared understanding of the procurement process and identifying areas of friction that need to be addressed.  

 

Objectives of the simplification project:

  • Improve the legal and procurement teams’ as well as bidders’ understanding of the tendering process and documents

  • Reduce the risk of errors and non-compliance when making changes to documents

  • Reduce processing time by optimizing efficiency

  • Attract more bidders by making the process more accessible, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises

  • Reduce the time and money lost due to inefficiency

  • Step 1: Conduct interviews with employees and bidders

    Q&A sessions with the organization’s legal and procurement experts, and individual interviews with 6 employees and 4 bidders. These interactions helped identify the needs and objectives of internal and external users to guide the simplification project.

    Objective: To understand the context in which the various documents are used, assess the level of understanding of existing tools, and identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement in the bidding process.

  • Persona Profiles

    Step 2: Analyze and summarize the issues and needs of employees and bidders

    User Profile: We have identified and characterized five main types of users involved in the procurement process: (1) Internal requesters who initiate the procurement request, (2) the procurement team, (3) the legal team, (4) contract administrators, and (5) suppliers. Creating personas makes it easy to visualize the results of user data and fosters empathy for their needs.

    Objective: To summarize users' needs, their level of understanding of the process, and the challenges they face in order to guide the simplification project and support decision-making.

  • Step 3: Understanding the Existing Process and Its Challenges

    Analysis and mapping of the existing process. To identify the issues that need to be addressed, we conducted a detailed inventory of all the steps in the bidding process, including the users, their actions, the tools or documents they use, and the issues related to those actions or tools/documents.

    This overview helps provide a better understanding of the process, identify bottlenecks, redundancies, and tasks that take too much time or resources, and thus pinpoint areas for improvement.

    We developed this roadmap with the understanding that it could easily be adapted into a tool for new employees, as it provides a clear and structured overview of what needs to be done and how to do it when launching a request for proposals.

  • Step 4: Create a customizable contract template and streamline other documents

    Excerpt from the questionnaire and example of its impact on the contract terms (1 of the mock-ups provided to the client). We created the following mock-ups:

    - a questionnaire that automatically generates a customized contract

    - a customizable service contract, with a structure that varies depending on the type of agreement and the risks associated with the project.

    - 3 simplified request-for-proposal documents

Results

The project is still ongoing. Internal teams have responded very positively to the preliminary versions. Here are a few examples of KPIs to track once the project is complete:

  • A decrease in the number of questions, errors, and complaints from bidders.

  • Increased autonomy and understanding among internal teams.

  • Reduction in the time required to prepare a request for proposals.

  • Reduction in the dropout rate among bidders.

Where should I start?

It's easy. Every client started by just having a chat with us.

Get in touch