Posted by Jon under Musings, Purchasing insights | 
OK, so the following isn’t about bids per se, but as an illustration of the consequences of choosing the wrong supplier for a job, this (forwarded to me by a non-work friend the other day) really made me laugh…
Read the text before looking at the photograph:
You may be asking for trouble when you commission taxidermy work from someone who is unfamiliar with the species. That was just the case for King Frederick I of Sweden in 1731.
The lion was a gift, but after it died, the pelt and bones were presented to a taxidermist who had never seen a lion. You see the result looks more like a cartoon character than the king of beasts. The stuffed lion is still on display at Gripsholm’s Castle.
Posted by Jon under Musings |
Readers here might be interested in the recently-announced findings of the IACCM’s survey into “Top Companies in Pre-award Bid & Contract Management”. Whilst there’s not a direct overlap between our world of proposals and the expertise of the Contract & Commercial Managers who completed the survey, there are some interesting results. The report concludes that:
Companies and organizations that can ensure mutual understanding and that create open, honest and transparent bid and proposal procedures are not only more likely to achieve successful outcomes, but will also benefit from being customers or suppliers of choice.
Once more, the highest ranking companies in this list come from the Outsourcing / Managed Services field, reflecting the scale of investment these organizations have made in ensuring the quality of their bid and contract process and organization. The scale of partnering with their clients, the need to ensure a fully integrated supply chain, and the need to manage highly volatile requirements and market conditions have combined to drive a high degree of sophistication and integration in their internal operations.
It is not surprising that most others in the leading positions come from relatively complex, project-based industries, such as aerospace and defense, engineering, and oil and gas. Here too, the sheer scale of investment drives strong focus on ‘getting things right’. But the list this time also reveals the growing capabilities of other market segments and geographies. Over 40% of those in the list are non-US corporations and they include several from India and the Asia-Pacific region.
The league tables are here (pdf). I’d treat the findings with a degree of caution – there almost appears to be an element of “big must be beautiful” in the rankings, and I’ve seen some pretty awful proposals over the years from a few of the highest-rated players! But it’s certainly an interesting study, and worth a quick browse.
