That report you're writing ... yes, that report ... you know that people are depending on it to make a decision, don't you? And that your employer is paying you to write it? 

It's your brand and you love it! 

Hammers. They're pretty straightforward to use. 

But have you watched someone adept at using them, like a carpenter? They know how to use this simplest of tools in a way that I can't. And a hammer only does two things: puts in nails and takes them out.

If you spend a lot of time writing, ensure your effort is not wasted. 

How? I’m glad you asked.

I’ve been participating in LinkedIn discussions about the quality of writing ... well, the lack of it. And I’ve read pieces in the press about the falling standards of English, like this article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

This got me thinking about the amount of formal business documentation that gets released without being properly proofread, edited and reviewed.

‘But it’s 118 pages long!’ exclaimed the project manager. ‘We can’t expect a service provider to read this when they turn up to do work for us.’

Picture this: I’m at a meeting with a client (a big Aussie company), presenting the draft of a document I’ve just completed for them. We (that’s me and the team I wrote the document for) are now socialising the document within the organisation. 

Considering what was presented, I was somewhat taken aback (to put it mildly) that the comment about the document’s length was the first piece of feedback we received.

Do you work in procurement?  Do you on occasion work with procurement to develop, say, a request for proposal (RFP)?

Then you’re in the right place!

This series asks you to think more carefully about your procurement documents.  It’s about helping you to produce a better product that results in the best possible solution or service for your organisation.

In this last part of my Love me, tender series,  I attack … I mean, I cast a critical eye over the response requirements for procurement documents. 

By ‘response requirements’ I mean the content you expect from a service provider to demonstrate they’re right for the job, and how you want that content to be presented.

Read my three final tips for procument document writers.

Do you get lots of requests for clarification to your RFPs and other procurement documents? Do you receive responses with varying content and levels of detail that make comparison difficult? 

These are measures of how clear your procurement documents are.

The question is: how can you make them clearer?

It’s essential that you consider how service providers will interpret and use your procurement documents.

With timeframes to meet and the effort required to get tenders out the door, the less confusion for service providers, the better. After all, service providers are the primary audience of your document.

Given the cost of developing procurement documents, organisations need to take care to achieve the best possible outcome.

Just look at what’s at stake: the commitment to a solution or service, with its associated—and potentially large—financial transaction, contract period and changes to business operations.

I hate flowcharts!  Harsh, yes, so allow me to explain …

As a means of mapping or modelling a process, socialising and refining it, and as a visual representation of it, flowcharts are hard to beat.  They make processes easier to define, understand and follow. 

But as the final documented form of processes, flowcharts aren’t always effective.

It's not flowcharts per se that are the problem—it's that, often, they’re poorly drawn.  And that's why I hate flowcharts.

MS Word templates.  Do you use them?

When I say ‘template’, I don’t mean a single-paged document with a few headings that you have to try and craft a report from.

I mean a multi-paged fully-branded document based on a company-wide style sheet.  And I mean a structured document with standard headers, footers, sections, headings, and lots of instructions to explain what’s expected of the author.

So, why bother with templates like that?