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From December 2017 to June 2018, FORTEM assisted Carestream with the prequalification phase and the bid process for Region Syddanmark’s tender for RIS/PACS diagnostic systems (also called “RIPA-Syd”).
The last time Carestream bid on a tender in Denmark was five years ago. Based on previous experience, Country Sales Manager for Carestream Denmark Christian Vigh believed that it would be necessary to bring in a Bid Manager, that could assist with the complex tender process.
“Previously, we have handled the bid writing process ourselves, but because tenders have become much more complex e.g. with the ESPD and ‘tender with negotiation’-format, we decided that we needed professional feedback and insight,” Christian Vigh says and continues.
“A tender of this magnitude absolutely needs to be handled by a Bid Manager and a dedicated tiger team”
FORTEM is a relatively young firm, and it was clear that they had an extra drive towards making everything work, which I experienced throughout the entire project. They went the extra mile – also during the final stage of the project, where they worked during the weekend and came to our office Monday morning at 6 am to go over the last details before the bid went into print at 9 am – they did what was necessary,” Christian says and elaborates.
“FORTEM took on more assignments, than we had thought possible; such as translating the material – it wasn’t actually their responsibility, but they translated the documents, went over them with us and fine-tuned the translations. It just goes to show, that they had a more extensive skill set than we had anticipated to begin with.”
FORTEM and Carestream both agree, that the collaboration worked really well all the way through. According to Christian, FORTEM was not only an external assistance during the bid process, but was also an investment in learning more about the tender process and bid writing.
“FORTEM gave us a sort of training or course in how to write bids for larger tenders – they didn’t just contribute with changes and notes to our texts, they also tried to help us understand, how we should read the questions and answer them in a fulfilling manner – which were a success. As I have told others in our organization, this has not only been an investment in the tender from Region Syddanmark – it has also been a learning process for all of us involved. Even the UK team, who helped write the bid material, were inspired by the process – they have always been really good at writing bids, but there are still elements from the process, that are going to a positive impact on their bid writing process in the future,” says Christian.
