Mel Dunn: Striving for perfection can create a negative feel by looking
for errors all the time...
Global Business and Development Solutions works with individuals and
organisations that are committed to business success and the success of
others.
We work globally and locally and focus on providing sustainable
solutions for our clients. We offer a range of services including:
- Proposal and tender development
- Technical assistance
- Research and strategy development
- Quality review of submissions
- Market entry support
- Partner identification
- On-ground representation
Visit the website for more information about how we could assist you
at www.globizdev.com.
You will also find a 'contact us' form there or you can contact us
immediately using enquiry@globizdev.com
We make every effort to respond to your enquiry within 24 hours.
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Global Business
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Mel Dunn,
Managing Director of Global Business and Development Solutions.
Please visit www.globizdev.com
for additional information about GBDS and how their services could
benefit you.
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The Quality Review
You have just spent many weeks preparing your proposal, which in
itself suggests that your desire to secure the opportunity is real. And
throughout this process, you have no doubt invested quite a lot as part
of the bidding process – internal team members costs, external writers,
site visits, research and so on.
So, how could you possibly afford to invest more to have your
proposal reviewed before submission?
I believe this is the wrong question; can you afford to not undertake
such a review?
The quality review is an important activity that should be factored
into to every bid – for investment and for time. It is important too
that the review does more than just look for typos and spelling errors –
these checks are essential, but not enough to ensure the submission is
as good as it can be.
So what should a good pre-submission quality review cover?
It is possible that the type of submission might dictate some
specific approaches and considerations in a review; a general principle
should be that the review should operate as though the reviewer is the
assessor of the proposal. In addition, we consider the following core
considerations to be fundamental in any pre-submission quality review
process, including:
- Compliance
- Language of submission
- Page length
- Formatting requirements – margins, number of copies etc
- Submission labelling
- Pre-requisite experience
- Team members – experience, composition, duration, location etc
Response to Evaluation Criteria
- Have you responded to each criterion?
- Have you addressed each sub-point within each criterion?
- Does your response demonstrate achievement?
- Does your response read such that the assessor can go “yes,
tick!”?
- If you have used diagrams – are they clear and self-explanatory?
Structure
- Appropriate space allocation against criterion weighting?
- Visual appeal?
- Does it contribute to your brand strategy?
- Does it follow a sequence that makes it easy for the assessor to
evaluate?
Readability
- Is it easy to read?
- Sentence length
- Grammar, spelling etc
- Is it convincing?
- Does it demonstrate to the reader that you know what you are
writing about?
So, does the review have to be done by an external party?
In short - no. However, there are certainly some good reasons to
consider this:
- Complete objectivity
- Fresh eyes looking at the proposal may bring a broader perspective
to parts of the proposal
- Time can be contracted for guaranteed attention to the review task
The review role may be a core competency of the reviewer – what they
do – hence you benefit from their past experiences – they know what to
look for
If you are going to undertake your review internally, then it is
important to follow some guidelines:
- Must be a fresh set of eyes – no value in the final review being
conducted by those who have been very active in preparing the proposal
to this point
- Must be conducted in a helpful, supportive manner – blame,
negativity etc are not helpful responses, and are likely to impact
long after the proposal is submitted
- This is a learning exercise – do not just identify ‘faults’ or
‘gaps’ – solutions must be offered
- Someone must be able to devote their time to the exercise – there
is no point starting a quality review process, then submitting before
the review is complete because the reviewer had other tasks to
undertake.
The challenge, whether an external or an internal process is to
balance the concepts ‘excellence’ and ‘perfection’.
- With excellence, we are looking for demonstration of great
performance so we can comment positively and build on it to create
further excellence
- With perfection, we are looking for errors, or performance that is
below par, so we can do something to correct this situation.
Striving for excellence creates an environment that is positive.
Striving for perfection can create a negative feel by looking for errors
all the time.
The reality is when undertaking a pre-submission quality review we
need to do both. We MUST uncover errors and correct these before
submission. Equally, we SHOULD look for points of excellence, as these
can be replicated, and may in fact be the solution to some of the
errors.
10 September 2005 |
Mel's Archives
The virtual tender team
Internationalisation of Education –
Globalisation or Development - the big picture
Preparing winning CV’s
So what do you do?: The art of
promoting yourself
Lateral thinking in tender preparation
Preparation
Getting Involved: So much more needed
Getting involved in the global development
market |