vegplot
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Quotes and tendersYe gods. What a palaver. Received a request for a quote from a local authority for some work. Had a quick read and thought " this can be done in half a day - tops". Seven man days later and the quotation (around 8,000 words) is emailed back. I do hope they appreciate the effort - FOR A QUOTE!
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Chez
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We had the paperwork for one of those last year - the budget for the job was two farthings and the tender document was about sixty pages long.
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Maxwell Smart
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Many many years ago when I still did computery stuff we had a request to develop an intranet for one of the largest food services groups in the UK. And by large I mean publicly traded.
Their budget for the ENTIRE intranet was something like low four figures. When we told them that was impossible and that really they need to be thinking about a budget about 25-50x greater they said they'd look at the figure. They came back with an improved budget which they were very excited about - it was twice as big as the last one.
They still didn't get that what they wanted to spend equated to about 5p per hour and wouldn't even cover the cost of the proposal we had spent weeks preparing.
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jema
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I have an bucket of glowing testimonials from Willis Corroon the insurance company as the company I was working for sold them some software of mine that was not even bespoke, it was off the shelf stuff.
But they found they could email in the afternoon (the lot I was dealing with were in Nashville) with an issue or even a feature they would like to see, and the chances are they would have a new release before they could finish work.
I don't think they knew what had hit them, as they were used to the whole paperwork trail where the work involved is far outweighed by the processes.
So called "quality" processes often don't just add a bit of overhead they can multiple the work 10x,100x even 1000x.
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vegplot
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I have a feeling the tenderer in this case probably won't use 99/100ths of the feature they're asking for. Some of them are mutually exclusive. Of course there's the classic "we also would like costs for xyz" with 3 or 4 words describing xyz - thanks guys great help.
The tendering process is very fraught. Often with no indication of budget and certainly no indication of whether you're just being used to make up numbers to satisfy auditors the process has been followed. For small businesses tendering is a nightmare often best avoided.
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orangepippin
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Public sector organisations are under great pressure to achieve "Best Value" in the way they spend taxpayers' money - and quite right too. Unfortunately, the way this is sometimes interpreted is to create long-winded and overly-complex procurement procedures. I don't doubt that in most cases this does lead to the right product being purchased in the end ... but at a substantial overhead cost in terms of staff time, which of course has to be paid for by the taxpayer.
The process also naturally favours larger suppliers, who have the staff resources and cashflow to be able to play the tendering game and put up with the lengthy public sector decision-making timescales. Smaller suppliers, who may nevertheless have good value innovative products and services are less likely to get selected, or even to bother to pitch for the work.
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jema
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The only good answer in a lot of cases, is to cut out the whole private tendering process and actually develop in house 
This is of course neither politically acceptable or risk free. Someone has then to accept they hold the buck.
I have been in the past called into a council via a company I worked for, not because I had a bleeding clue what I was doing, I did not, but really simply so that responsibility could be passed 
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vegplot
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We've been in the position where we've written the spec for the client, in the hope we stood a good chance of getting the work. Only to be to excluded from the tendering process because were we involved in the tender preparation. We now ensure that if we do this in future there are no pre-existing exclusion clauses.
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orangepippin
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| jema wrote: | The only good answer in a lot of cases, is to cut out the whole private tendering process and actually develop in house
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Developing IT systems "in house" also means bringing responsibility and leadership in house too, something that, as you imply, could require a significant culture change for many public sector organisations.
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jema
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| orangepippin wrote: | | jema wrote: | The only good answer in a lot of cases, is to cut out the whole private tendering process and actually develop in house
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Developing IT systems "in house" also means bringing responsibility and leadership in house too, something that, as you imply, could require a significant culture change for many public sector organisations. |
Indeed, and it would have to involve starting to pay in house IT staff the big bucks, so they could get the good staff. But leadership is as much the key as anything.
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vegplot
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| jema wrote: | | But leadership is as much the key as anything. |
Often oxy-moronic in local authorities.
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Maxwell Smart
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In-house is becoming less and less of a soluton for many large companies as they begin to off-load resources to keep their overheads lower.
I had one customer who took it a step further than tendering. They did reverse auctons but what made it more difficult was that it was an international auction process. So if you are bidding on the job from the UK you were up against countries where the labour rates were far cheaper.
There were also no real quality control issues with this process (irregardless of what they claimed). After all you get what you pay for.
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orangepippin
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| Maxwell Smart wrote: | | In-house is becoming less and less of a soluton for many large companies as they begin to off-load resources to keep their overheads lower. |
That is true in the private sector, but I think the points made previously are that outsourcing is actually more expensive in the public sector because of cultural issues which add substantial overheads to the cost of tendering and managing external contracts.
However I am not so sure that pay is an issue. In my experience public sector IT staff are paid similar rates to staff in the private sector (particularly at middle and senior levels), and have longer holidays and more flexible working opportunities than you find in the private sector - although I am sure there are exceptions.
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vegplot
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Outsourcing is tax efficient, wages aren't and you can recover VAT (where it applies). I just wish the process was a little easier for small businesses to get a slice of the pie.
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