Providing specialists for opportunity-based bid services, to support business winning; whether leading the bid or augmenting an existing bid team.

Shipley offers flexible and professional capture and bid resources to work with your business winning teams. Consultants can be brought in to support your bid from start to finish, or to supplement your own resources at various points; allowing you to augment your team as needed with experienced consultants who will help plan and implement the business winning process and allow you to avoid the expense of full-term consultants when you do not need full-term assistance. We offer:

• Qualified capture and bid managers – Shipley’s capture and bid consultants are all former senior business winning professionals who know and understand about winning new business. All are accredited under the APMP’s certification programme
• Experienced writers and editors – Shipley’s writers and editors are experienced bid contributors who know and understand about writing in a customer-focused manner, which will maximise potential bid scores. All are accredited under the APMP’s accreditation programme
• Imaginative graphic conceptualists and artists – Shipley’s graphics team members have extensive experience, across a range of industries, in developing graphics for bids. They know how to develop graphics which support strategy and are not just included to make the proposal look good
• Specialised bid coordinators – Shipley’s bid coordinators are experienced bid support personnel who know and understand about managing the bidding process. All are accredited under the APMP’s accreditation programme
• Specialised bid contributors – Shipley has a number of industry sector and/or discipline specialists in all of the above categories, in the event that particular knowledge of a sector (such as rail, Government etc.) or discipline (such as commercial, risk etc.) is required.

All assignments operate under our ISO9001-accredited Business Management System. We begin with a clear statement of work, defining all roles and deliverables. You can monitor progress by regular reports from Shipley’s lead consultant. To reduce costly rework, save time, and improve proposal quality, our specialists are equipped with proven tools and templates, including the Shipley Proposal Guide, ROSE Executive Summary Builder, ROSE Bid Planning Tool and the BidBench proposal assessment tool.

Outsourcing knowledge management
There are many tools designed to help with knowledge management. However, the tools do not help you decide what needs to be managed, nor do they provide you with the resources to manage that knowledge. Bid knowledge management is a priority, but never seems to be the highest priority.

Shipley has the resources and technical understanding of what is needed most in a bid environment, to ensure that your re-use material is always customer focused and updated in a timely manner.

Preparing templates and tools
Templates and common tools are essential if a bid development team is to be efficient. Knowing which ones are important and how to make them user friendly takes time that we don’t all have.

Shipley has a range of bid templates and tools which can be adapted to meet your organisation’s needs, as well as consultants with the skills necessary to be able to develop them from scratch, if that is what is required. Our consulting professionals can jump-start live opportunities by demonstrating how to use the templates and tools.