How an outsourced bid team works
An outsourced bid team handles bid management, writing and review on your tenders, to an agreed scope. To work well, it needs a named sponsor inside your business, access to the people who hold the evidence and a clear approval process. Agree what happens between live tenders as well as during them, how competing deadlines are prioritised and which work is included in the fee. Your business keeps control of price, facts, delivery commitments and the final submission.
Before you start
Who this helps
- A growing business that tenders regularly but has no full bid team of its own
- An in-house bid manager who needs regular help with writing and review
- A leadership team deciding how to organise bids across several services
Points to check
- An ongoing fee does not mean the team can take on unlimited work at once.
- The team needs prompt access to your specialists and approvers.
- Keep approved evidence and submission records accessible to your business.
Agree what the team will do before it starts
List the responsibilities you want covered: opportunity review, qualification support, bid planning, evidence interviews, writing, review, submission preparation and post-result learning. Decide which of these your own people will keep.
Agree who sets priorities and who can add a new tender to the schedule. No team can plan reliably if several departments can each add urgent deadlines without regard to the work already booked in.
Give the team a clear picture of your business
Share your service descriptions, target customers, the areas you cover, how much more work you can take on, relevant projects and current commercial priorities. Go through the evidence you have and name who can approve each piece.
Start with the likely tender questions and the opportunities coming up soon. Onboarding should end with a workable plan for evidence and decisions, not a folder of documents nobody has checked. Keep a visible list of unconfirmed facts and missing material.
Set a working routine
Agree a regular meeting to review new opportunities and who is free to work on them, with shorter meetings on individual bids when needed. Use one schedule showing buyer deadlines, internal evidence dates, reviews and approvals. Keep a response register for each live tender.
An ongoing arrangement can also include work in quieter periods, such as improving case studies or reviewing feedback. Put those outputs in the scope. If the service reserves the team’s time every month, agree what it will work on in a month with no suitable tender.
Put clear decisions to the right people
The team should bring specific questions with context: the requirement, available evidence, proposed approach and decision needed. Give each one an owner in your business and a date. Escalate early when an unanswered issue affects the deadline or changes the offer.
For example, a response promising weekend cover requires an operational plan and an approved price. The writer can spot and explain what that promise depends on, but someone with authority in your business must approve it.
- Delivery owners approve methods, resources and operational facts.
- Finance and commercial owners approve price and contractual positions.
- An authorised approver in your business signs off the final offer.
Plan around the tenders you expect
Look at likely tenders by scope and timing, not just the number of opportunities in the pipeline. Two complex submissions in the same week can take more work than several smaller bids spread across a month.
Agree how much notice the team needs, how much work the fee includes, how extra work is agreed and what happens when an urgent tender cannot be fitted in. Confirm who covers absence and when independent reviews are booked. Revisit the plan as the pipeline changes.
Review the service and keep your records usable
Look at accuracy, timeliness, how usefully the team challenges you, how much of your own people’s time it takes and the quality of the evidence it keeps. When results arrive, read the feedback alongside the original reasons for bidding. Do not judge a new arrangement on one award result.
At the end of each bid, keep the approved evidence, the final submission, decisions and outstanding commitments. If the arrangement ends, those records should make for a clean handover. To scope an outsourced bid team with Bidgen, bring the tenders you expect next quarter and a list of the bid tasks now spread across your colleagues.
Customer outcomes
80% of our customers win at least one award within three months of starting with Bidgen, and 90% do so within six months. These figures cover our customers as a whole, measured from the date each one started with Bidgen. Our case studies describe the work, scores and award outcomes behind these results.
Common questions
01Can an outsourced team work with our existing bid manager?
Yes. Agree what the manager keeps and what they hand over. A clear owner inside the business can make it easier to get evidence, set priorities and secure approvals.
02Will we have to explain the business for every tender?
An ongoing team can keep what it has learned about your business, along with your approved evidence. Each tender still needs checking against what you can deliver now and what the buyer asks for. Old answers and commitments should not be reused unchecked.
03Does outsourcing remove the need for internal bid time?
No. Your team still needs to supply and approve evidence, make delivery and commercial decisions and authorise the final response. A well-organised process keeps that time focused.
04What should be agreed before signing an ongoing arrangement?
The remit, capacity, named roles, client inputs, review routine, fee, change and notice terms, confidentiality and access to records. Include how overlapping deadlines and quieter periods will be handled.