Developing a Bid Library

Every organisation that bids on a reasonably regular basis should take the time to develop a bid library. These can be invaluable resources to support you in being more efficient and effective in your bidding process. Without them, you run the risk of lost information, missing lessons learn, and having a more time-consuming process than is necessary.

What is a bid library though? Every organisation I have supported in developing one has had slightly different ideas, but in essence, a bid library is a repository of all of your bid “knowledge”. As a minimum this should include:

• Previous bid answers, categorised by client, service and type (i.e. HR, IT, etc)

• Previous feedback, linked to specific answers where possible

• Case studies, categorised by what they would be useful for

• Client testimonials

• Internal news and information - such as service development, awards, etc

• Positive KPI data and service reports

• Other relevant statistics, such as number of staff, people supported, etc.

How you present the above will depend on what you are most comfortable using and what is most accessible for other people in your organisation. At a basic level, you could have it all on one categorised spreadsheet, but this can get messy when there is a lot of information to deal with. My recommendation would be to have a spreadsheet as an index, with then each category of information in clearly marked folders.

Developing bid library can be a tedious and time-consuming job, but the benefits far outweighs this. A keyword of caution though is to ensure you keep it updated, or all the hard work that was done in the first place will be wasted. Designate someone you can trust to stay on top of it, whether that be a bid coordinator or a general adminsistrator.

If you want any advice or support in developing a bid library, please get in touch with us using the contact details below.