360 Assessment (Solo) – the free, fast and factual tool for you

The BidCode® 360 Assessment (Solo) analyses your organisation’s current activity against the standards and latest practices encapsulated in BSI’s PAS 360:2023 – the only recognised specification for Bid and Proposal Management. It’s called ‘Solo’ because you can do this on your own.

We all know bid managers and writers can’t generate great bids on their own. So, rather than look at bidding capability simply from the perspective of your bid team or processes, the PAS 360 considers how the whole organisation’s methods, mindset and culture contribute to the success of your bids.

The PAS 360 is a significant evolution from other benchmarking tools and maturity models, which are often rooted in older best practices that focus on proposals alone or only measure performance against averaged survey results.

As a BSI document, the PAS 360 is based on up-to-the-minute, proven best practice, pooled and refined by a range of industry representatives from many different types of organisation; bidding brilliance by real companies, for real companies. It provides the foundations for a real assessment of an organisation’s bidding maturity, regardless of size, sector or structure.

Ours is the first and only self-assessment tool that has been designed from the ground up to benchmark you against the PAS 360. You answer a series of questions, and we give you instant results and an instant report with recommended improvements.

It’s free, because we want everyone to benefit from PAS 360.

It’s fast – it takes an average of 10 minutes to complete, but you may stop and ponder as the questions trigger insight. It’s worth it.

It’s factual and objective because it’s based on the PAS 360 rather than what someone thinks is right.

BSI picked us as the technical author for the PAS for a reason. We’ve been in the trenches, setting up and managing bidding functions, from global firms to niche defence consultancies. It’s not about crafting a standout proposal for us (that’s only part of the puzzle); it’s about making the pivotal function of a business run more smoothly.

Drawing upon our hands-on understanding of the industry and aligning it with the framework of the PAS, we’ve crafted a collection of maturity statements. These are structured around the five foundational pillars of a bidding function: Leadership, Governance, Practices, Information, and Capability. These pillars are the essential elements required at the strategic level for bidding functions.

If you’re looking into this, you probably want to improve, but change is a complex endeavour. That’s why we also consider and test how ready your organisation is to take on those challenges and shifts.

The assessment model has been refined and validated through engagements with top-tier clients, underscoring its effectiveness and applicability. We know this works.

You don’t necessarily have time to read and digest the standard, and then determine how you can assess your performance against it. Not many people have that luxury even if they are perfectly capable of doing so.

We know that not everyone works for a company that is willing to invest in an external consultancy to carry out this kind of assessment either. In a chicken and egg situation, they want to know the need and business case before they will invest…

We drove the PAS from the initial idea to a freely available reality because we want people to benefit from it, so we also developed a free tool to help anyone that needs it.

Why would you want to spend even 10 minutes thinking about your organisation’s performance?

Measuring your maturity against the PAS 360’s whole-organisation standards will highlight where you can improve your bidding approach, processes and culture, and help you understand the priorities for change. Acting on these recommendations will support a host of benefits from increased win rate to improved efficiency.

The results and report will give you ideas for improvements, and support the case for change within your organisation. You can take a factual assessment to the stakeholders that need to endorse change.

Having this initial benchmark gives you something to measure yourself against once you have made some changes – ensuring you keep on track and course-correct as needed.

You probably know what needs to change. Spending time going through the assessment will confirm what you do know and raise questions that make you think. Giving the bidding function this focus will give you space to think, which is not always easy in our profession.

Find a quiet place and turn on your ‘do not disturb’ so you can focus on going through the 360 Assessment https://www.bidcode.app/

Once you’ve done that, we are more than happy to jump on a call and talk through PAS 360, your results, or your world in general. There is always more nuance to find in the details when you can talk. We can explain and explore with you, looking for ways you can get some quick wins and plan out longer-term improvement initiatives.

What about your team?

Maybe you want to collaboratively identify and improve performance issues with an objective facilitator that can pull on threads and help the team understand.

We can facilitate an impartial, inclusive and insightful assessment of your total bidding capability in a workshop setting, making sure everyone is clear on the actions required for optimisation and inspired to implement them together.

Get in touch through chat, book a call or email to curious@bidcraft.com.