If your company is a General Contractor or Developer who needs to find a 3rd party service to provide a job, the Tender module in Archdesk is for you. It centralizes all processes related to tendering in one place and helps you to choose the best subcontractor for the specified job. This module supports single-stage selective tendering and multi-stage selective tendering and allows you to select tender participants easily and finally gather their offers within all necessary documentation.
Before you run the tender you need to create a BoQ (Bill of Quantity) / BoM (Bill of Materials) as a Quote with the items to be delivered by a 3rd party.
The Tender is created directly from the Quote, so you can create a few quotes and their corresponding tenders within one project OR create several tenders on one quote. Keep in your mind that you CANNOT run one tender for the items from multiple quotes or projects.
If there's any existing Tender you are looking for, related to a specific project, you can find it in Project Details -> Tenders.
On the other hand, all ongoing Tenders can be visible on the dashboard Tenders. They can be customized for each department separately based on your requirements. For example, the Procurement Specialist will see all tenders in the draft phase, while Project Director will see all tenders awaiting his approval.
NOTE!!! The Tenders Dashboard will be created by the Implementation Team. If you have any queries about how this can be done, please contact us at support@archdesk.com
When you finally created a new Tender or selected an existing one, your next step is to choose the 3rd parties to be invited to this Tender.
If you would like to check the history of tenders with any subcontractor or supplier first, you can navigate to his profile by Contacts and hitting on Tenders to see the list of all tenders he is related to. This list will present all tenders he was assigned to in the past, no matter if you finally send the tender's invitation or selected him as a winner.
When you already collected all participants for the tender and set Tender Evaluation Criteria, you can send tender invitations to participants via e-mail directly from the system. It can include additional documents such as an invitation letter or extra documentation alongside the Pricing Spreadsheet template if needed.
Once you do so, the subcontractor will receive a personalized invitation e-mail with all Tender details included.
Archdesk authorizes 3rd parties to upload their offers with additional files by themself via Uploader Link attached to the e-mail and passes that data automatically to the system without any work of the system user.
There're also other methods of adding Tender offers from the suppliers so that you can fit that into your business process.
Once you get subcontractors' offers, that is the right time to preview the offers and compare each other. You can do that directly in the system or download the reports as well.
In some cases, you can decide to go with the multi-stage selective tendering process, which means running an additional Tender Round for chosen suppliers.
To do so, please enter the Tender and use File -> Create Revision.
In the next step, you must decide who will be included in the next Revision. You can also choose the Round End Date.
When you do so, the tender participant list will point out that some of the offers have been declined, so you can re-do the process of sending out the invitations with Pricing Spreadsheets to the remaining participants.
When you get the offers back once again, the system will show on the first look only the Latest Offer, however, you can enter any historical offer anytime.
However, in some cases, after reviewing the offers, you may decide to split the tendered job by parts for a few subcontractors. If you decide to do so, you must decline that tender and run the new ones from the related Quote with the chosen specification.
The whole process of sending invitations and adding the offers looks the same as before, however, you can simplify it accordingly to your business process.
When you gather final offers, the next step is to finalize the Tender. The system will show you the recommended winner, however, you can overwrite the decision and manually choose the supplier you wish. Once you do so, the system will calculate Tendered Cost and transfer it to a related Quote.
The Tender is finally completed, and you can create a Purchase Order for the supplier to track the process of Contracting & Delivery.
You can also check the current status of each tender item if it is Ordered or Invoiced. You can see the list of Purchase Orders/Invoices be by clicking on the available icons.
The Tender module also has very flexible access rights control for system users, and you can limit access rights to the tender for specific departments. You can also manage more detailed, who can Invite Participants, Manage Tenders or see any type of data within that. You can also decide who will be able to process a specific stage within the tender approval process.
If you are a general contractor or real estate developer and you carry out many contracts as part of one common investment within the more advanced budget structure, you may need to use the dedicated Archdesk Budget module. For more information, please contact us at support@archdesk.com, and a specialist from our team will guide you through that process.