Getting business from public sector procurements

All public sector organisations in the UK (apart from the NHS - though this may change under the Government's proposals) have to use an EU-compliant procurement process if they want to do any business over a certain threshold. This can be seen by both the customer and supplier as an imposition and a bureacratic overhead but the process can be turned to your advantage. This blog is for potential suppliers of public sector organisations and gives a number of hints and tips to help you get the business.
Firstly, most public sector organisations have an institutional bias towards being seen to be fair and all are terrified of challenge. Think of it this way - if you are bidding for a private sector contract you may never get to know what are the selection criteria, or even if they have any. The contract may go to the company owned by the golf partner of the MD and you would never know or be able to cry foul. In contrast a public sector organisation will have written decision making criteria and a scoring system. Many of them will publish it with the ITT, but if they don't you can ask for it. You should.
Next, put yourself in the shoes of the poor civil servant who will be assessing your bid, along with all the other responses. They will have a day job, which probably takes up more than 100% of their time. Their priorities are:

1. Get the evaluation over with as quickly as possible so that they can get back to their real work
2. Reach a decision that can't be successfully challenged by the losers
3. Pick the best bid

in that order.
You can make it easy for them. Copy their scoring criteria and paste it into your tender response. Put it as close to the front as possible. Put in a paragraph about what a fantastic company you are if you must (everyone expects it, to an extent) but remember that everyone else will do the same, probably in more detail and the assessor will skip past this to the meat of the bid.
Just as an aside, whenever I see a statement about a company or person I ask myself, if you make the inverse staement, does it make any sense. For example, a company says, "Our offering provides a best-in-class solution tailored to fit your needs", do you think anyone would claim the contrary, that, "Our offering is a mediocre solution with limited scope for customisation", even though it might be true?
Now fill in each of the boxes with your response. You can even leave the box for the score in as this will allow the assessor to print the response off and fill it in at night over a glass of whisky (not that this ever happens).
Put all of the other crap about the details of your solution, quality processes etc in Appendices at the end. It will add credibility to your bid but don't expect anyone to sift through it trying to figure out whether your score for "Capability to build relationships with third age organisations" should be a 6 or a 7 cos they won't

Happy bidding