Enquiries and subsequent orders for commercial projects generally enter contracting companies through their sales engineering or marketing organization, and it is usually from this source that other departments of the company learn of each new enquiry or firm order. Even when enquiries bypass the sales organization, sensible company rules should operate to ensure referral to the marketing or sales manager so that all enquiries are 'entered into the system' for effective handling and response. This will ensure that every enquiry received can be subjected to a formal screening process that will assess its potential project scope, risk, and value.
Every enquiry must be registered and allocated a reference name or number that identifies it uniquely. There is no point in spending time and money in defining a project at the enquiry stage unless it is going to be possible at all subsequent times to know without ambiguity to which enquiry - and, just as important, to which version of that enquiry, a particular definition refers. The procedure can be quite simple; the register can be similar to the project register described in Chapter 19.
A company whose work involves a large number of small projects can receive a proportionately large number of customer enquiries, often as telephone calls. A useful and common practice is to provide sales engineers or other relevant members of staff in such companies with pre-printed pads, designed with two purposes in mind:
1. The first is to provide a checklist of information requirements, arranged so that the person receiving the enquiry is prompted to ask all the necessary questions.
2. The other purpose of using pre-printed forms is that, if properly designed and used, they can save a great deal of time in taking down the initial enquiry details.
The work involved in responding to an enquiry and preparing a tender can easily constitute a small project in itself, needing significant preliminary engineering design work plus sales and office effort that must be properly authorized and budgeted. The potential contractor will want to consider every enquiry received in order to decide the appropriate response. Enquiries from customers with a poor reputation for paying their bills or who are not financially sound are likely to be viewed with some disfavour. Other enquiries might be outside the capability of the receiving company, or be inconvenient and unwanted for a variety of other reasons.
It is customary, therefore, for companies to subject enquiries for new projects to a rigorous screening process to determine the appropriate response and either authorize or refuse to commit the time and costs needed to prepare a formal tender. Screening decisions are usually made at senior management level, often at regular meetings held for the purpose. Some companies record their screening decisions and manage appropriate follow-up action using a form for every enquiry.
The potential customer will almost certainly set a date by which all competitive tenders for a project must be submitted, so the time available for preparation of a formal project proposal is usually limited. Everything must be properly planned, coordinated and controlled if a tender of adequate quality is to be delivered on time. What often happens is that tender preparation starts at a slack pace, with inadequate control, so that insufficient time is left for the end activities of typing, checking, correcting, printing, binding, signing and delivery. Then there is a frantic last-minute rush, with people working all night to produce the final version and special messengers or couriers given the almost impossible task of delivering the tender by the purchaser's deadline. However, if you plan ahead, you can easily avoid these headaches while putting forth the best proposal possible to the customer.
About Author :
John Reynolds has been a practicing project manager for nearly 20 years and is the editor of an informational website rating project management software products. For more information on project management and project management software, visit Project Management Software Web.
