Hello! My name is James Milner and I provide interim document formatting support to teams responding to ‘must win’ tenders.
As the submission deadline approaches, valuable time will be wasted if your writers are struggling to format their own documents.
I can take care of all the formatting so they focus on crafting answers that are compelling and responsive to your prospect’s needs rather than wrestling with Microsoft Word.
Working through my own limited company, I have been helping bid teams with response template design, formatting, document management and uploading the final submission to customer portals for many years.
No bid is too challenging and no document problem too difficult to fix!If you book me to support your bid:
- Your team will spend more time writing quality content while I manage the formatting and layout.
- Your submission will look more integrated, consistent and professional.
- Your prospect will have an easier time evaluating and scoring your bid.
It all comes down to this
Figure 1: The immense effort that goes into creating your content can be let down if the documents are poorly formatted. I can make your whole submission look consistent and well-presented for the evaluators.
You will probably win or lose the contract by what is contained in your response documents, and with several other companies all determined to become the ‘preferred bidder’, competition will be fierce.
The look and feel of your response will also make a statement to the prospect about your company’s professional ability and how well it follows tender instructions, so a poorly formatted submission could signal carelessness and a lack of attention to detail.
With the sheer volume of work that needs completing in order to create a winning bid it is easy to run out of time and submit the response with multiple formatting, layout and content errors. These will not do your team justice and make the submission more difficult to read, navigate and score by the evaluators.I can help your team by formatting the whole submission to look consistent and well-presented while staying compliant with all bidding and branding instructions. Your company will look professional and the evaluators will easily locate the information they need.
Reducing issues and improving process
Figure 2: There are many unforeseen challenges when responding to a tender. I can make sure that the templates, formatting and document management do not cause additional frustration and delay for your team.
Demanding customer requirements and tight deadlines mean there is often an immense amount of work for bid teams to do in a short space of time - so anything that might hinder the timely creation of the response needs to be minimised.
A common weak point in bidding is the actual response documents themselves. Templates, formatting and document management processes can all cause problems and slow down progress if not approached in the right way.
All three should have proper planning, design and testing before the writing commences to eradicate what may seem like insignificant issues that then quickly grow into real problems when the writing stage is in full flow. These problems can then have a knock on effect to the many other bidding activities going on and cause a lot of frustration, rework and delay.By engaging me to build the templates soon after the tender has been issued you can drastically reduce the formatting and document management issues your team will have nearer submission.Any problems that do occur can also be fixed more easily to help keep your writers productive and on track.Problem templates will only create
problem documents
Figure 3: Problem templates create documents that have fragile formatting and are hard for teams to work in. I can create robust, compliant and easy to use templates so that your writers are productive and not wrestling with Word.
When your team starts writing, a problem template can easily turn into hundreds of pages of problem response document. If your templates are unstable, hard to use or non-compliant then everything created from them will have the same issues.
Not only will these documents be hard for your team to work in, they will also need significant formatting work when time is most precious – just before submission.
Common problems like bullets disappearing, headers and footers displaying incorrectly, pictures flying off the page and broken heading numbering will all need fixing before the deadline - in every single document!I can create robust, compliant and easy to use templates that will reduce the problems many writers have with Word so the productivity of your team will increase.
The documents will also need less formatting work just before submission so more time can be spent fine tuning the content.Your flexible proposal formatting resource
- ready to support your team -
Figure 4: Responding to tenders is not always a 9-5 job. I can work with your team and around their commitments so the remaining time up to submission is used as efficiently as possible.
If you don't respond to tenders very often, you might not have the expert skills in MS Word and document management needed to support your team, or maybe your bid department is temporarily overstretched from an extension or two. Whatever the reason, I can provide interim support to get your documents looking good and submitted on time.
We all know that responding to tenders can be a tough job due to the long hours and short timescales, but with many years of experience in this role, I am 'battle hardened' to cope with these challenges.
If it helps, I can work outside of office hours, at weekends or even overnight so formatting work does not hold up the writing and reviewing activities. This will enable your team to have more ‘uptime’ with their documents towards submission.
I can work with you at your location for closer collaboration (central London preferred) or if your bid office is located elsewhere, I can deliver a similar quality of service remotely.I am your flexible formatting resource that works with your team and around their commitments so the remaining time up to submission is used as efficiently as possible.
If you book me to support your team I will do whatever I can to get your bid formatted and submitted on the portal before the deadline.- Client feedback
I have had the honour of supporting great bid teams in some notable companies:
Below are some recommendations from my Linked In profile.
(Swipe or click right, below.)
I would love to help support your team!
Call me now to book
support for your bidMobile: 07980 428306
Alternatively, you can contact me using the form below.
