Customer advice to the tenderer

Hello dear readers.

Periodically, topics appear on Habré, telling about tender processes through the eyes of either the customer or the participant.
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People who write on behalf of customers say that everything is not so bad and scary. Participants, on the contrary, respond that the results do not justify the effort expended. During my career I purchased for different structures and according to different regulatory documents. These were both federal structures, and state corporations and private companies. Therefore, I will try, based on my experience, to tell about the peculiarities of the procurement in the institutions of the executive branch, large commercial structures and enterprises with state participation.

1. State institution

The structural unit in which I served was engaged in conducting financial and economic activities. Including purchases. From the first months of service, it became obvious to me that many circumstances of the internal schedule influence the choice of suppliers.
So it turned out that the Internet was far from being administered to everyone (apparently secrecy and other things). In the department in which all purchase contracts were concluded, only the person who posted the information on the State Procurement website had the Internet . And people more or less familiar with the FZ-94 know that not everything is published on public procurement, but only that which is more expensive than 100,000 rubles. Contracts for a smaller amount are concluded based on the results of market monitoring.
Thus, finding a supplier for such an amount without the Internet was not an easy task. And guess who first we went to the commercial offer and the contract? To those who sent us their offers, or whom we knew from previous contracts.

Thus, for suppliers whose contract amount does not exceed one hundred thousand rubles I can give the following advice:

Commercial offers - do not neglect them; send them with a description of services, goods that you are ready to sell to the nearest state and municipal institutions. I already see how many of the suppliers will roll their eyes to the sky and say - yes, nobody reads them!
Perhaps you are right, but you need to declare yourself. Your task is for the commercial proposal to reach an ordinary contractor who needs to conclude an agreement. For a commercial proposal to reach it, it is necessary to arrange it accordingly.
(For more information on the procedure for processing and reviewing letters by government agencies, see Federal Law No. 59 , which also applies to letters from legal entities.)
The main thing is that your commercial offer should have all the necessary details of the letter, namely:
- the name of the state or local authority,
- the position of the head of this state body,
- the name of its organization,
- signature and name of the head of your organization,
- outgoing number and date.

In the presence of these details, your commercial appeal will not be put aside, and in accordance with the law, will be transferred to the relevant department, ie to the contractor, who will postpone your proposal indefinitely, and retrieve it when it is urgently necessary to buy a product or service offered by you.

Dating - this advice is suitable, perhaps, to work with enterprises of all forms of ownership. If you happened to perform work or sell services to any of the state institutions, do not hesitate to be more sociable while fulfilling the obligations under the contract - kindly consult, discuss, suggest an alternative, after work you can ask yourself if everything works fine. There are two goals here - to show that it is convenient to work with you, and to be remembered. If everything is done correctly, they will contact you again. You have no idea how much easier it is to work when the phone of the desired supplier or manager is clogged in a cell phone. And do not hesitate, first of all I will turn to them, since I have been working with them for a long time.

However, most of the criteria determining the final choice of a supplier are dictated by law, and by understanding it, one can gain some competitive advantages.

Knowledge of the financial features of budgetary enterprises - a very large number of enterprises in our time are working on a prepaid basis. However, this number is not always the case with state institutions. Knowing those or other conditions preferred by the customer, you can safely get a contract, while competitors will continue to demand a 100% down payment. People in the civil service are not inclined to bargain, and hearing "We work only on prepayment" hang up and look for another company. This is because the law on certain types of transactions does not allow advance payment, and the contract is needed yesterday. In this regard, customers from public institutions need to offer payment on the fact. Or, if such conditions are unacceptable for you, inquire about the conditions for the allowable amount of advance payments from state employees, raising the relevant laws. This is clearly explained to us by Clause 17 of the Decree “On Measures for Implementing the Federal Law“ On the Federal Budget for 2013 .... ” . It clearly specifies the size of the allowable advance for each type of transaction. Naturally, every year comes a new ruling.

The rest of the tips apply to purchases worth over 100 thousand.

Schedules - some benefit can be learned by learning about planned purchases for the year ahead, and planning your time and effort in advance. Since FZ-94 obliges all government agencies to make procurement schedules for the year ahead, there is an opportunity to learn about it. Purchase schedules are published by customers on the Government Procurement website in the appropriate section . Focusing on the information from this schedule, it must be remembered that changes to the procurement schedule for each object of procurement can be made no later than ten calendar days before the date of posting on the website about the opening of the tender. Therefore, planning to apply for a tender, and preparing for this event, about a week before the opening of the tender, consult the schedule to know about the changes in advance, and in time to react to them.

Conditions - you must carefully read the terms of the purchase, because a discrepancy on any of the points will serve as a reason not to accept your application. Separate attention is given to the clause on the timing of the signing of the contract by the winner - if this deadline is violated you may be placed in the database of unfair suppliers.

Questions - you need to remember that the documents and TK are made by people, and often in multitasking mode, standing instructions from management and phone calls. Therefore, with a high degree of probability, obvious errors or incomprehensible moments may occur in the procurement documentation. (In Kazakhstan there was even a case when in the procurement documentation somehow appeared a fragment of a pornographic story). Bumping into each incomprehensible moment in the procurement documentation you need to ask questions and ask for clarification from the procurement organizer. It is better to ask and do the right thing than not to ask and send not what you need. By the way, in addition to the requirements for the order item, there are also requirements for participants placing an order when performing certain types of work. Requirements for bidders in which you are going to participate can also be asked to clarify. This is called the procedure for clarifying the documentation to bidders - it is established by law, and asking questions is your right. The organizer of the purchase shall, within a maximum of five working days from the date of receipt of the said request, provide the bidder with a written or electronic document explaining the provisions of the documentation that caused the request. The e-mail of the customer’s representative in the procurement information must be present - it’s just there for you to send your questions to him.
The answer is published by the customer on the purchase page in the appropriate section.

Proceeding from the situations and life experience, I can also add that in the field of public procurement, outside participants have practically no chance in tenders for capital construction. There are very strong interests from Moscow. Current repairs, maintenance, supply of various goods from the area of ​​operating expenses were won by various companies, mostly without corruption components. In the field of IT corruption is. True, over the past year, the number of cases when those who should not have grown have won. Just offered a lower price. Interested persons gritted their teeth - but the contract was still given to an honest winner.

2. Private commercial company

Procedures in a private company, where I worked afterwards, aimed at extracting maximum profit, and preserving cash flow were enormously different from the state ones. Certainly corruption was present too. But in the tenders for astronomical sums that were held centrally in the corporate center in Moscow. Local procurement procedures, even for millions of dollars, were fair. After a while, I was inspired by the corporate spirit, learned the company's procurement procedures, and began to tender.

Since the Internet in a private company is a customary matter, commercial offers are not particularly valid here. Most of the information about the supplier can be obtained from his website. In this regard, I would like to advise the following.

Website - indicate on the website the contact details of the specialists who work for you. And do not allow the presence of irrelevant information or services on the site. As a rule, if the phone on the site is not working, then it is easier and faster to go to the site of the next company. As for inactive services, a simple example is that on the site of one of the insurance companies of the federal scale there is a huge amount of information about services, but there is no contact information for a branch in my region. Instead, the service "Leave your number and we will call you back." As a result, no one called me back, and I no longer consider this organization as a counterparty.

Correspondence - answer all invitations to participate in tenders that come to you in the mail. Even if your answer is no. If you do not participate in tenders in principle, write about this, attaching your commercial offer in case you need to purchase a non-competitive bidding. If the topic of the tender is not yours - write too, telling about your services or product. If, however, to ignore the invitation - you will no longer be written, even when an urgent contract is required, without any tenders. A number of companies in the invitation to tender, for example, are immediately warned - “the lack of an official response may hamper your continued participation in the company's procurement procedures.”

Searches for tenders - many suppliers, having heard the word tender from me, asked - Is it public procurement? - completely ignoring the name and legal form of the enterprise which I called a minute ago. Often, people associate tenders with state companies and lose a lot because of this. Each large company practices tender procedures for purchases over certain amounts, or certain categories of goods. And information about these tenders, private companies publish on their sites. They also report on the conditions of their procurement procedures. Of course, it will be necessary to delve into the procedures of each customer, which is not so simple, but you can get a contract for very considerable amounts in case of victory. On how knowledge of the procedures may affect the result of the tender, I will write below.

Negotiations - private companies consider money. And bargained. A request for a price reduction can mean anything. It depends on what company is asking for a discount. In private companies, this desire to save. For example, our company practiced comparing prices with prices of similar purchases from the previous period, and if the excess was higher than the rate of inflation, the management told me to spend the second stage, let them fall in price. And if you receive a letter asking you to drop in price - fall. Though on a penny but fall. For large companies, this is important. For the supplier is a demonstration of loyalty, goodwill. For the customer - a matter of principle. In certain situations, the provision of such a discount can benefit. Let me give an example: locking and sealing devices were purchased on railway wagons. The two main criteria are the price, and the preferred deferral of payment is 60 days. Companies gave bids with a delay of 60 days. Prices were on average similar because one manufacturer, the difference is only in the margin. There was one favorite who, with the current price ratio, would have won. After the discount request, the picture has changed - only one supplier fell. He fell literally a penny to 10 per unit of goods, with a deferment of payment of 30 days instead of 60. He was chosen.

Flexibility - do not immediately refuse to participate in a tender or conclude an agreement if some conditions do not suit you, or seem blatant. Better think about how many other suppliers have already abandoned this contract. I will give one more example. Since our company worked only after the fact and also requested a deferred payment of 60 days, it was often difficult to find suppliers. Many refused. But there were intelligent. They understood that many had refused before them, and many would refuse after them, and simply laid their risks associated with such a delay in the price of the goods. As a result, they often turned out to be the only ones who gave an offer and received a contract.

Knowledge of the procedures - every time, sending procurement documentation to suppliers, we attach the procedures and our contact details so that we can send a question, and we, in response, send clarifications. And during each tender there are representatives of organizations that send either an incomplete package of documents (despite the attached inventory), sending these documents later than the deadline or with other violations. As a result, their applications are not accepted for consideration. In some cases, this even leads to disqualification for a long time. And this is with millions of contracts. Therefore, carefully study the procurement procedures and requirements for documents. Pay attention to details such as stamps and signatures. All this is important.
As an example: among other conditions of tenders, there is a requirement that the lot is indivisible. That is, if it is necessary to put a table, a chair and a bedside table, and an offer comes only on a table and a chair, then such an offer is not accepted for consideration. But if some manager would have read that the lot should be indivisible, he would, if necessary, outbid the missing commodity position and include it in the offer at the incoming price. There are a lot of such jambs. About typos in prices, I generally keep quiet.

Personal approach - in private companies, especially large ones, as a rule, the security service tries to demonstrate its necessity, and employees know it. Therefore, most likely, they will make surprised eyes to questions about personal interest in this transaction, and state that they do not understand what you are talking about. If they report your proposals to the Security Council, then most likely you will no longer enter into a single contract with this company.

Justice - in some firms there are institutions such as a conflict commission, which should not be neglected. If, in your opinion, the tender was not fair, please contact such a commission. As a rule, she sits in the corporate center, and there is no personal interest in the competition held at the branch, so the chances for an objective consideration are high.

3. Company with state participation

In this case, the activity is carried out on the basis of the FZ-223 , which is in many respects similar to the FZ-94. Purchases are also published on the state procurement website. The subsidiaries of such state corporations in their work use their own procurement regulations, which almost completely duplicate the above-mentioned law. Subsidiaries of state corporations that are not covered by FZ-223 publish information about their purchases on the websites of these state corporations (see the council on searching for tenders).

As for the everyday wisdom regarding tenders in such companies, they are generally similar to what I said about government procurement. In addition to this:

Negotiations - in state corporations this is called Rebidding. As a rule, it is carried out when the proposed prices do not correspond to the original value of the contract. It can not be exceeded. Therefore, if you received an invitation to participate in rebidding, the situation is likely to be as follows: all offers received exceed the amount that the customer is willing to pay, so you most likely need to fall, otherwise the tender may be replayed.

Of course, this information is far from fully describing all the situations arising in the procurement process. However, I hope it will be useful for someone, and the next time you, as a supplier, instead of indifference, will experience sports interest.

Upd: I would like to add that the advice on working with government agencies is valid until December 31, 2013. That is, until the entry into force of the Federal Law of 05.04.2013 N 44- “On the contract system in the field of procurement of goods, works, services for state and municipal needs”, after which this issue will require additional study.