What is Tender?

After working in an Indian Tender System for a long time, I found that most of entrepreneurs are not fully aware of this essential system which is capable to raise their business to a peak. I found that most of them are uncomfortable with this system. But now a day’s there are lots of Tender Service providers available in the market which helps you to participate in Tender System. We will talk later about such services but right now let’s start talk from the base of the Tender System.

Basically Tender is a platform generated to offer a competition between different bidders offering same work, supply or service so that the quality work will be obtained at reasonable cost. However such process must ensure that there are no loopholes in the system so that any individual has a back door entrance or having an underhand connection. Generally tenders are published by Government sector however huge Private sector also publishes tenders for their required work service or supply.

There are different types of tenders, classified by different categories. They can be classified as follows

Tender according to their Sector

• Government  Sector Tender
• Private Sector Tender
• PSU(Public SectorUndertaking) Tender

Tender according to its boundary

• Open Tendering
• Restricted Tendering

Open Tenders: In an open tenders system, the publisher publishes the tender publically via a public medium like local or national newspaper, government portal, website etc where any eligible party can participate. The eligibility to participate tenders has been decided by the publisher and few other authorities.

Restricted Tenders: In Restricted tender system the publisher invite to some of the specific parties to participate in the tender. No other individual is able to participate in the tender.

Tenders according to stage

• Single Stage Tendering
• Multi Stage Tendering

Single Stage Tendering: In single stage tendering, the best bid done by an aspirant will win the tender.

Multi Stage Tendering:  Multi stage tendering is further classified in two parts.

• According to the Technical and financial selection:In this type of system there are two proposals placed, one for technical proposal and financial proposal. First the technical proposal is reviewed and evaluated followed by financial Proposal
• According to the Open tendering and then restricted tendering:In this type of system first the tender is being published as open tender and then the few selected individual will be invited to take part further.

Tenders can be issued through:

• Expressions of interest (EOI) – The participants are shortlisted before detailed declaration of project.
• Request for information (RFI) – It is similar to EOI in which the publisher wants to gather information about some specific parties/companies and then the eligible one will be invited to participate.
• Request for proposal (RFP) – The companies/Parties has to submit only technical proposal as innovative solution is needed.
• Request for quotation (RFQ) –Used when there is a specific requirement of goods or service. The best priced quotation get the tender.
•  Request for tender (RFT) - It is just an open tendering and the advertisement has been given in public media like newspaper, Website, etc.      

It is observed that many aspirants who fulfill the eligibility to participate in tender will lose the tender just because of lack of perfect documentation. The perfect documentation will improve your chance to win the tender. We will discuss later about the “Things to keep in mind while filling a tender”.