When FES began its work the win probability was extremely low.
An aeronautical systems provider was one of a few companies worldwide who were positioned to capitalize on an emerging market being driven by the adoption of new international standards mandating a specific modern technology. One of their competitors had gotten out ahead and secured a few contracts with early adopters putting this company in jeopardy of being left behind in the global battle for reference sites. With this as a backdrop, an imminent request for proposal (RFP) from a state air navigation service provider took on heightened importance for this company.
Just prior to the publication of the RFP, the company named FES as Capture Manager and tasked us with leading the response to the RFP on their behalf. All RFPs have their own unique combination of procedural, administrative, legal, technical and financial challenges. In order to win you must navigate through these challenges with a carefully thought out and flawlessly executed bidding strategy. This RFP proved to be more challenging than most due to the extremely complex bidding procedures and the fact that the technical requirements had already been heavily influenced by the competitor. When FES began its work the win probability was extremely low.
To increase the chances for winning, FES developed a win strategy based solely on the quality of the RFP response. As a first step, FES evaluated several local companies who had a successful history of winning and established a partnership with the one best suited to supporting the effort. Working closely with this partner, FES was able to structure the format and content of the proposal so that it met the local requirements and laws. Secondly, FES assessed the tender evaluation criteria and scoring system and worked with the client to adapt its technical proposal to maximize its scoring potential. Finally, FES analyzed the financial aspects of the RFP to understand the customer budget, how best to minimize costs & local duties/taxes and conducted research into the historical prices of the competitor to best position the client for winning.
The winning strategy became clear, among the bidders who submitted responsive proposals, the winner would be selected based on a weighted scoring system of price and the quality of the technical solution. Considering the technical requirements favoured a competitor, it would be necessary to offer a lower price while still scoring as high as possible on the technical evaluation to overcome their advantage.
When the bids were opened, it was announced that both our client’s and the competitor’s proposals met the mandatory requirements, but that ours had the lowest price. This improved our chances, but we both had to undergo the technical evaluation and if we did not score highly enough we would lose. The results of the technical evaluation were surprising, our client actually outscored the competitor in spite of their advantageous position because FES had done a better job of addressing the rigid scoring system within the proposal. As part of the tender process, the competitor was even given the opportunity to review our RFP response to identify any mistakes that were made in the proposal or in the evaluation. In the end they could find nothing and our client was awarded the contract.