Visit to a site for which, or at which, the contractor will be providing services.
Intended to communicate the scope of work clearly and fairly to all bidders.
Can be mandatory or optional, depending on RFP terms.
Useful for identifying competitors, even in this day of electronic bidding sites, as some companies pay consultants to download RFP documents.
Can be useful for building team cohesion. Can just be weird . . .
Refers primarily to a client not meeting its own promised or forecast date for issuing an RFP, as in “The RFP is slipping to the right.”
Also refers to any schedule deadline being changed to be later than originally advertised.
Note that nothing ever slips to the left.
This week’s oft-confused terms (margin and markup) give me my rant du jour. Do such silly little differences as whether something is calculated as a percentage of selling price or of cost really matter?
Only if your continued employment depends on achieving a certain profitability for company owners.
Only if you’re trying to communicate clearly with executives.
Only if you’re trying to understand important nuances.
Only if you’re trying to respect domain expertise.
Proposals often see us working with people we know not much in areas we know not at all. A good place to start is by learning the basic jargon. Or at least not being impatient of nuances that seem inconsequential to us, whether those nuances are grammatical, technical, managerial, or financial.
Ask, listen, and learn.
An accounting term for the difference between the cost to the producer or supplier and the price at which it is sold; calculated as a percentage of cost.
Erroneously, often used interchangeably with margin by non-accountants.
An accounting term for the difference between the cost to the producer and the price at which it is sold; calculated as a percentage of price.
On proposals, often misused by non-accountants to refer to the percentage markup a bidder will add to its cost to cover, for example, general and administrative costs and profit.