Bid Strategy & Solution Design
Designing the solution before writing the answer
Strong bids start with a strong solution. Before drafting begins, organisations need to understand what the customer is trying to achieve, what the procurement requires and how their proposed solution will deliver the required outcomes.
Souter Point helps clients develop coherent, differentiated and deliverable solutions for complex bids and procurements. We combine requirements analysis, structured solution design, and bid strategy to build the foundations for compelling responses.
Our approach puts the customer and service user at the centre of solution development and follows a simple principle: Policy → Process → Technology.
Policy establishes the context. We analyse procurement requirements, evaluation criteria, customer objectives, contractual obligations, legislation, regulation, and other constraints the solution must address.
Process defines how the service will actually work. Using techniques such as design thinking, customer journeys, process mapping, data journeys and swimlane diagrams, we develop the operating model and show how customers, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders interact with it.
Technology is then considered as an enabler. Rather than designing around a particular system, we determine the technology required to support the process, improve the customer experience, generate data and reporting, automate activities, and deliver the required outcomes.
How we can help
Our Bid Strategy and Solution Design services can include:
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Requirements and evaluation analysis: identifying what the customer and service user need and how the solution will be assessed;
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Solution workshops: bringing together operational, commercial, technical and subject-matter expertise to benefit from a broad set of expertise when developing a solution;
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Customer journey and service design: demonstrating how the proposed service works in practice through high-level solution design, persona creation, process flow mapping and data journey documentation;
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Operating model and process design: covering policy, people, process, technology and governance;
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Technology and data design: aligned to the proposed operating model, using a C4 model architecture to illustrate technology systems, users, data and information;
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Win strategy and differentiation: establishing why the proposed solution provides a compelling choice; and
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Solution validation: testing compliance, feasibility, commercial viability and deliverability.
The result is a clear, evidence-led solution architecture and bid strategy that gives bid writers and contributors a common blueprint, reduces contradictions between responses and provides a credible foundation for the entire proposal.
Case Study: Commercial Strategy & Solution Design for a £330m Global Visa Application Outsourcing Contract Award by the UK Home Office
Souter Point personnel led several key activities in a £330m global visa application outsourcing award from the UK Home Office, including developing the bid strategy and solution design. The contract - in which our client won two global regions covering Africa, Central Asia, Europe and parts of the Middle East - required extensive bid strategy and solutioning work, with dozens of supply chain partners and the introduction of new technologies and operating models into the service.
Our client replaced two incumbent service providers, with Souter Point having undertaken over two years of engagement with the UK Home Office to position the company as the 'future of the industry', showcasing high-quality existing services and an advanced technology suite. A commercial strategy targeting regions where incumbent suppliers clearly charged inflated prices led to the company's largest-ever contract award, covering 102 locations in 88 countries.
A new target operating model was developed to incorporate the expanded supply chain, including governance arrangements for subcontracting, an approach that our client had not previously used in its service delivery.
We developed solution design documents for each workstream, as well as an overarching high-level solution design document to brief senior stakeholders and project team members.
Case Study: Successful Bid Strategy Results in Major Contract Award by Immigration, Refugees & Citizenship Canada
When Immigration, Refugees & Citizenship Canada launched a new global bid to provide outsourced visa application services, Souter Point was appointed to lead the bid strategy. Although our client had many years of experience providing outsourced visa application services, that experience was concentrated in two geographic regions. Furthermore, the administrative evaluation criteria - which were either pass/fail - meant that our client would struggle to produce a bid that would even qualify.
Souter Point reviewed the administrative requirements and determined that, by subcontracting services in several key countries, our client could claim the subcontractor's experience to boost its score and meet the administrative evaluation criteria.
Using contacts Souter Point had developed over many years in the global visa application outsourcing industry, Souter Point assembled a strong supply chain that would enable our client to meet the administrative criteria red lines and score highly on the global experience evaluation criteria.
Further leveraging our network, Souter Point obtained signed references directly from national governments confirming that our client's intended supply chain had been subcontractors to a prime contractor on another similar contract, enabling our client to claim this experience.
The result was a major contract award to provide services in a new geographical region across the Americas, more than doubling our client's footprint and revenue.
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