I spend a lot of time writiing bids for council work, the kind of work that appears to be available on tendering websites. This work is perfect for us but we have never been successful in a bid.

I have noticed in forums more and more people seem to be getting disillusioned with the whole process.

As time goes on I start to believe that there is always a preferred supplier before the tender has even been advertised.

I would be interested to hear from anybody else who has experience of the tendering process and what they have learnt from the experience.

Do small companies actually stand much of a chance when bidding for work that has been put out for tender?

like you I spend a lot of time tendering and in my sector the average hit rate is around 1 in 10! It is time consuming so you do have to weigh up the pro's and cons.

I think they do have the requirement to put things out through the official procurement channels but sometimes (but not always) have preferred suppliers. I do think (having been in public sector) its about finding an angle to your bid while you meet their various criteria.

Its also worth going to the "buy local" type events to get that personal contact and follow it up.

I've been like a terrier with this one and my hit rate now is about 1 in 5

Thanks Jo,

Guess I shouldnt give yet.

Ive heard of "buy local" schemes but never seem to know of any events, do you know of any forth coming events?

You can also try the bluelight website and the competefor website, if its any help

Have you come across the SCMS system (http://scms.alito.co.uk/)that local authorities use? It's free to register and tenders can be completed online. I have some stuff kicking around on tendering from Tendering for Care (http://www.tenderingforcare.com/)if anyone wants it, protocols, examples of policies and stuff.

I have joined the bluelight website and the SCMS system, I like both systems and have been using them a lot but it is competeing through these that for one tender the draft docs had been posted - I could see what they were asking for before they tidied it up and it seemed clear they wanted a big company with quite specific off the shelf software but on the tidied up version this was taken out so it looked like all companies would stand a chance and many waist their valuable time. As a small company we cant afford to waste time tendering for jobs we are never going to get.