A tender is a process by which institutions, companies that are called tender holders or buyers invite bids from suppliers of goods and services for procurement purposes. Understanding the tendering process and what the buyer expect is essential in winning a tender.
Buyers or tender holders are the organizations who announce tenders information and are looking for proposals from companies who can do the work. Buyers announce their tender as a Request for Tender (RFT). Suppliers or bidders are companies that send their proposals to the tender holders for offering goods, services or both.
Companies that response to a tender are called suppliers or tenderers or bidders. When the tender holder accepts a proposals from a bidder then there will be contract between them that it is called tendering process.
The competitive process of tendering
Pay attention that accepting a tender proposal is not necessarily the tender with lowest price. Buyers are seeking response from multiple suppliers so there is always a competition among the bidders in response to the buyer.
Every tender has its own conditions that are called Conditions of Tender. When governments announce tenders it is called government tenders. All countries have their own governmental tenders systems. They may publish it in newspapers or in their tender portals.
Type of tender requests
Tender request may be in different types:
- Request for Tender
- Request for Proposals
- Invitation to Offer
- Request for Quote
- Request for information
There is another type of tender by the name of Request for Expressions of Interest (EOI) and as a matter of fact it is not tender request but is the often the first step in the tendering process. In most types of the tender a fixed price is requested from bidders. A Tender response is requested from different suppliers and this cause competition among the bidder in giving their proposals.
The received responses are evaluated by buying team according to the criteria of tender. After evaluating the responses a successful tenderer or bidder is selected and tender is awarded.
When you win a tender so there will be an agreement and contract between you and the buyer. A tender is not a contract but when you are accepted as a bidder for that tender then there will be a contact between you and buyer.
What documents are included in a tender request?
Usually there are some documents attached to any tender request. Below we mention some of them:
- The rules of the tenders both for supplier and buyers.
- Some forms of the tender that the bidder should complete and deliver to the buyer.
- The conditions of contract that after winning a tender you should accept them and sign it so that that tender is awarded to you.
How will be the Tender responses?
On the base of tender nature and complexity of the tender, responses vary from one page to hundred pages. Please pay attention that before delivering your response you should evaluate your chance of winning honestly.
Who announces tenders?
Tenders may be announced by different companies, governments, organizations or funding agencies. Tenders announced by buyers have their own policies and these policies may be varying in different tenders. Government tenders are the known tenders that announced every day in high numbers in different countries. It may be in their native language or in English language.
How to access to world tenders information?
Everyday thousands of tenders are announced by different buyers all around the world. Accessing to all of them by the suppliers is impossible. Bidding Source Company as a leading tender information center can help you to access to all of these tenders in one portal. Our international team in different locations of the world gather tenders information every day from thousands of sources and after processing and categorizing, publish them on Bidding Source website and suppliers can access to their own business related tenders all in Bidding Source website.
There are hundreds of international buyers that deliver their tenders directly to Bidding Source for publishing on our international tender portal. You can access to world online tenders on BS tenders information portal. We publish all tenders information across the world and make it available to you in one website. Bidding Source tender alerts systems will help you to receive your business related tenders every day in your email inbox.
