So does the best cost equate to best value?

Tenders are often a source of great reward but at the same time can result in an awful lot of time and effort being spent to produce nothing except disappointment and a thank you for your interest.

You can spend months meeting and understanding a clients needs and mirroring your solution to match these requirements, then procurement rules dictate that it must go to tender. So you provide the best fit, the best tender response but not necessarily the best price.

So then when you don’t win and everybody agrees that you were the best application but the rules around the award, which nearly always do, favour the best cost and not the best system, I start to question the point of a process that asks all these questions in the first place, that in the end is simply going to award the cheapest provider.