International tender
The following tips are supposed to provide some advice to organisations that are preparing to send out an international Request for Proposal to us.
1. Preparation and collection of information
Do not rush into a RFP project without clearly planning. Outline what and how much product and policy change your RFP is aiming for. A strategic plan including solid objectives is imperative before the launch of a tender.
As the international OEMs do rely on a decentral sales organisation in order to ensure best customer care in each country, an international RFP from a multinational organisation usually makes it necessary for an OEM to involve its national sales companies or dealerships in order to respond to an international tender appropriately. To launch an international RFP, therefore, the provision of consolidated data including brand/model mix data and country specific information on the current fleet profile and practices are mandatory to allow us to prepare a proposal together with our national sales partners.
Below we provide an example how a country specific fleet overview could look like and which information is necessary to be included in order to give us and our sales partners a sufficient idea of your national fleet profile and to prepare a tailor-made offer for you for each country.
To get our national sales partners properly involved to commit to your task it is important that you provide an overview of your local subsidiaries as well as local contact. Please check the example below for details.
Dos:
- Get in personal touch with us and our International key account managers and give us the possibility to receive a solid idea of what your needs are.
- Be able to demonstrate that your RFP project authorises you to negotiate on behalf of the entire company and, by that, enables you to really affect the fleet policy of your local subsidiaries.
- Do make sure you provide convincing evidence on future opportunities resulting from your new fleet strategy in order to gain the best proposal or to improve the current national terms.
Dont`s:
- Do not launch a RFP without the involvement of your local entities. Considering the local expertise and the implementation of your fleet strategy it is advisable to involve your local fleet managers in the RFP process.
2. Tender process and coordination
After suitable preparation there are some other qualifications to be considered by you in order to make sure your RFP will lead to a successful execution and is not only a collection of information provided by the OEMs.
Dos:
- Do allow at least 4 weeks for the offer to be compiled to make sure your RFP is answered completely by us.
- Go for the correct price, not the lowest. The focus should be on building a long lasting „partner driven“ relationship rather than a pure "price driven" selection of suppliers.
Don’ts:
- Regular meetings together with your local decision-makers might take some time, but are needed to ensure full local "buy-in" for future implementation.
- The involvement of an external fleet consultancy may prevent or reduce the mandatory exchange of information between you and us.
3. Implementing your tender
When having reached agreement with us we strongly recommend you to invite us or the selceted OEM(s) to discuss details of implementation.
A kick-off meeting is supposed to ensure that we start the relationship with a clear vision and understanding of all elements of the agreement.
Dos:
- Create an Implementation Guide togehter with the OEM as basis for an implementation across all markets. This document is to inform your individual fleet contacts and our country fleet managers of the agreement details and what they have to do in order to implement the deal locally.
- Appoint an Implementation Manager who is in charge of taking care of the whole implementation process for all markets
Don’ts:
- Don’t believe that implementation is done by communicating the agreement to your local fleet contacts. Our experience shows that the single most effective method to realize the implementation of an international fleet strategy is to follow the „Dos“ listed above.