Begin with a shared brief
An IT tender should prepare a specific decision. Describe which services you want to source or change and what you want to achieve. A list of existing activities is often insufficient: the intended future collaboration needs to be clear too.
IT, business functions and procurement should develop a shared understanding. Establish who owns requirements, who evaluates the technical content of bids and who makes the decision. This reveals conflicting goals before different expectations enter the tender documents.
Describe services and interfaces
Describe the tasks, expected results and boundaries of the services being sourced. Include relevant systems, dependencies, volume assumptions and requirements for quality and collaboration. Distinguish mandatory requirements from preferences and identify open questions explicitly.
Interfaces are equally important: what will your organization contribute? Which decisions stay with you? What information will actually be available to the provider? Clear prerequisites make it easier to identify and compare assumptions in bids.
| Element | Question to clarify | Tangible output |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | What should the new collaboration improve? | An agreed brief and decision criteria. |
| Service | Which tasks and results are included? | Service scope with clear boundaries. |
| Responsibility | What stays internal and what does the partner own? | Roles and clear interfaces. |
| Evaluation | How do we make bids comparable? | Shared criteria and response structure. |
| Transition | How will knowledge and services move? | Requirements for transition and launch. |
Evaluate bids on the same basis
Agree evaluation criteria before bids arrive. Alongside cost, consider capabilities, the delivery model, quality assurance, team setup and governance. Define which criteria are essential and how differences will be documented.
Give providers a comparable task and a shared response structure. Clarify important questions transparently and check whether price differences reflect different service assumptions. A lower price becomes a meaningful comparison only when the underlying service and internal effort are understood.
Consider transition before deciding
Future collaboration does not begin only after selection. Ask during the tender how knowledge will transfer, responsibilities will move and the start will be organized. Take ongoing operations and the capacity of your own teams into account.
Also clarify how progress, quality and problems will become visible. A service commitment needs a shared understanding of who assesses it and how deviations are addressed. This preparation connects provider selection with collaboration that can be managed in practice.
Finish with a decision others can understand
Document the evaluation, important assumptions and open questions clearly. The decision should explain why a bid fits the task and which requirements still need to be met before starting.
Lupus supports sourcing strategy, service definition, tendering and partner selection. We also consider transition and organizational integration. We agree our responsibilities to complement your existing capabilities and the specific assignment.