Thanks to Glen Alleman for this guest blog

The use of 3 point estimates is fraught with statistical integrity problems. Don't elicit estimates in this way.

While many will have anecdotal evidence of this working for them personally on small self contained projects, the issue of estimating impacts enterprise, multiple supplier, and integrated project teams (…

You can see a copy of Alex King's presentation from the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) November 2014 regional event.You can download Andrew Beurschgens review of the event here:1430401711_pdf_CIM_Vol_18_1_Beurschgens_King. 'Tactical Competitive Intelligence for Bid Teams' argues that much of the Competitive Intelligence available to bid teams is inadequate and…

You can download a copy of Alex King's presentation from the UK Association for Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) Annual Conference 2014 here: Price_to_Win-_No_Longer_a_Black_Art_(Issue_2.1). 'Price to Win: No longer a Black Art' argues that Price to Win must be a transparent, predictable and repeatable methodology.

The session was attended by ~50 delegates and opened…

Competitive Intelligence (Ci) is essential to bidding success. The whole concept of offering customers a value proposition requires your offer to be better than a competitors. Competitive Intelligence for Bids & Proposals is the process by which we benchmark our offerings and performance. However, in our Bid Technology survey Ci was highlighted as one of the quickest ways to improve…

Bids & Proposals are collaborative by their nature. That means getting 'buy-in' is vital for their success. This could be buy-in to a range of things (e.g. leadership, strategy, a price etc). The example in this blog comes from outside the world of Bids & Proposals. However, the principals are perfectly applicable to our entire organisations, as well as Bids & Proposals. A recent…

Thanks to Duncan Gowing for this guest blog

After several years promoting the importance of effective “Bid or No Bid?” decisions with my employers, I wanted to obtain wider opinions about which bid qualification criteria are really the most important, across a range of organisations.

My “Bid Qualification Priorities” survey was publicised via the LinkedIn…

Thanks to Terry McGuire, BDM Director of Bespoke Bids Ltd, for this guest blog: 

Within any position, no matter where you work, there are always going to be recurring problems. For example, for physiotherapists it could be repetitive strain injury due to the amount of massages they undertake (ironic I know; or self-proliferating perhaps and is why there are so many…

This presentation was given at Presentation given at the Association for Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) regional event in May 2014. This was the first public presentation of survey results of 178 bid professionals. Amplio Director, Alex King shares people's attitudes on 'how Technology is changing bidding'. The feedback from the event was complied into a white paper that gives…

Who needs Price to Win?

Some industries bid repeatable products and services; the competitors pricing strategy is observable from historic data. Price to Win is for those of us that don’t have this luxury! For example, several Defence, IT & Transport bids are bidding for one-off projects that have no historic precedent.

This methodology is for you if price might equal…

I’ve met top estimators from lots of different walks of life. From professional gamblers, cost estimators, Price to Win practitioners and stock market analysts. I found the best ones all did these 3 things. Conversely, none of these things are prerequisites to producing estimates. The estimator who just collects bottom up estimates isn’t doing any of these. This is not just another common…