Published
Sharing feedback whether good or bad is crucial for improving performance in any business. CPC always seek and appreciate members feedback allowing us to identify potential areas of improvement across CPC services and frameworks.
One of the most disappointing elements of feedback that we receive from members is that on occasion you may not have received as many tender returns as you had been anticipating. Worse still not only have you not received as many bids as you were hoping for, you have lost valuable time in the process and the suppliers have not provided much feedback offering any explanation for the lack of response.
We fully appreciate that this can be frustrating and regularly talk with our suppliers to request that they provide you with feedback on your process. This may be a simple confirmation of their intention to bid or if they are not going to bid, provide feedback outlining their reasons for declining the opportunity. This puts you back in control of your procurement process as a buyer.
It’s extremely rare for suppliers to not want to bid or to take the opportunity to respond and there is usually a rational explanation for their lack of response. We ask our suppliers to share these reasons with you to enable you to review or amend the process if necessary. It could be something straightforward such as there is information missing from the tender document or perhaps, they feel that they have not been provided with enough time to respond. Equally it could be that the opportunity is not presently an attractive proposition due to several considerations such as; commerciality, staffing, location, current workload etc. We think it’s vital that suppliers feed these reasons back to you as early as possible to allow you to get the best out of your procurement exercise.
Suppliers similarly regularly feedback to CPC that they are often provided with little to no feedback from members when they have responded to the opportunity but been unsuccessful. Most suppliers simply want to understand how their bid could potentially be improved to increase competitiveness and stand a better chance of winning the business next time around. The value of this feedback to suppliers is significant as is the time and cost they have incurred putting their response together. A supplier’s perspective is why continue allocating resources to bid for opportunities within the education sector when you regularly receive little to no any feedback from unsuccessful bids?
It is important that we all work together to improve communication and provide the other with feedback. We have prepared a similar article for our suppliers to explain the importance of providing feedback to you and equally we encourage members to ask for your own feedback if required. Why not ask suppliers to confirm whether they are interested in your opportunity as part of your invitation? Using an approach which explains the importance to you, we believe that together we can increase the amount of feedback both members and suppliers receive to improve the framework experience for everyone.
CPC has prepared a presentation called Making a Framework Work, to further facilitate understanding in this area.
Many thanks in anticipation of your support.