This article is the first in a three-part series offering a practical guide to tender analysis. Each part focuses on a key element of interpreting public sector tenders with insight and precision. Part One explores buyer motivations and stakeholder impact – essential foundations for crafting compelling, tailored bids.
Buyer Motivations: Who’s Going to Market and Why
The first question to ask is who is the buyer and what is driving this procurement? Understanding the buyer’s identity and underlying motivation is crucial. Is the tender issued by a local authority, a central government department, a healthcare trust, or another type of public body? Each type of organisation has its own objectives and constraints. For example, a tender from an environmental agency might be driven by new regulatory standards, whereas a city council’s tender could stem from a political mandate to improve local services.
Try to discern the root cause or pressure behind the tender. Are they trying to comply with new legislation or policy directives? Is the procurement part of a broader strategic initiative or reform? Perhaps the buyer faces public pressure to improve outcomes in a certain area, or needs to replace an outdated system. By reading the background sections or introduction in the tender documents (and even researching news or strategy documents about the buyer), you can often identify these drivers. Once you grasp why the tender is happening now, tailor your bid to address those motivations.
For instance, if the tender is clearly policy-led (say, supporting a government digital transformation agenda), make sure to highlight how your solution aligns with that policy and helps fulfil it. If the procurement is driven by a legislative requirement, emphasise your compliance and understanding of that law.
If it’s about solving a specific problem (like reducing waiting times in a public service), frame your proposal as a solution to that problem, not just a list of products. Showing the buyer that you understand the bigger picture – and positioning your company as a partner in achieving their broader goals – can set you apart. In short, always connect your offering to the buyer’s underlying “why.”
Stakeholder and Impact Analysis
Public sector procurements often involve multiple stakeholders. Beyond the immediate buying department, consider who will be affected by the project or service being procured. These stakeholders can be both direct and indirect. Direct stakeholders include end-users of the service (e.g. citizens, patients, students), as well as the staff or teams within the buyer’s organisation who will work with the supplier. Indirect stakeholders might include oversight bodies, partner agencies, or even political representatives and community groups.
For example, a tender for a new IT system in a hospital will directly affect doctors and administrative staff using it, and indirectly affect patients and perhaps the regional health authority monitoring outcomes. Performing a stakeholder analysis helps you map out these groups and their priorities.
Ask: Who stands to benefit or lose from this contract’s success? What would each stakeholder care about? A winning bid often mirrors the buyer’s world back to them – meaning it acknowledges the needs and concerns of different stakeholder groups that the buyer themselves must answer to.
If you demonstrate awareness of, say, how your solution makes life easier for the end-users and satisfies the metrics important to the buyer’s executive management, you show a level of insight others may miss. In practical terms, use this analysis to tailor your response: include specific benefits for each major stakeholder group. Perhaps your service will improve customer satisfaction for citizens, or it will provide better reporting that helps the buyer’s managers meet their targets. By explicitly addressing stakeholder impacts in your bid, you reassure the evaluators that you have thought through implementation in the real world and will deliver value across the board.
