Can you talk a bit more about "no bid"? What should the supplier do to send the right message. No bid due to XXXX? Is that a good thing to say? Is it procurement best practice to find out the reason why someone did not bid? Or can they ignore it?
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For Procurement to work effectively, buyers need hungry, willing and capable suppliers who want to service their requirements. When suppliers no bid then something has gone wrong in the pre tender communication.
I like to consider Procurement as a 'mating ritual' between two companies who communicate and go through processes to find if they are the right fit for each other. Increasingly Im seeing that suppliers who just receive an RFP from a company they have never spoken to, they are likely to 'no bid'.
Ultimately any supplier will run their own 'bid / no bid' procedure which is typically a process which sees them consider the likelihood of winning the tender versus the benefit of winning divided by the effort required to bid. Buyers need to consider this as they are preparing the RFP in order to maximise the number of responses (remember Procurement works best when we have multiple interested parties). What we sometimes see is that the buyer sees the category as 'leverage' yet the supplier market thinks they should be a 'strategic differentiator'. Buyers should consider engaging the market prior to the tender / RFP i order to understand what the market thinks, adjust the RFP accordingly and maximise the number of responses and interest.
Personally (as a buyer) I would be disappointed if a supplier just 'no bid' rather I would want them to say ' in order for us to bid, we would need to understand x or y'. Likewise if a supplier did ultimately no bid a tender, I would want to speak to them to understand why so that I can incorporate best practice into future exercises.
Thanks for the great question and I hope this helps.