Managing bids at the engineering–commercial interface: a systems, integration and contingency perspective

Abstract

PurposeBid management is an important presales process that involves not just pricing but also determining requirement fit and managing ambiguities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the challenges of coordinating bid activities across the engineering–commercial interface from the systems thinking, contingency, coordination and engineering perspectives.Design/methodology/approachA thematic analysis of an internal survey and four embedded case studies were conducted on multiple affiliated business units across diverse product segments and geographic markets in the electronic manufacturing services (EMS) industry.FindingsThe results show that challenges in any EMS bid can be distilled into the inter-related categories of price/cost, quote lead time, cost-accuracy, coordination and technical knowledge/capability. Moreover, the embedded cases suggest that engineering-based solutions, such as quality function deployment, target costing and value engineering, can be useful if suitably applied, but fulfilling diverse bid requests using generic processes can hinder effective bid management.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors propose three principles in a framework for EMS bid management, namely (1) bid management can be modelled as an open system; (2) process focus and integration mechanisms are structural requirements in effective bid systems; and (3) a contingency approach can help alleviate the increasing complexity of bids.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by proposing a contingency model of engineering-based approaches according to product archetype and a practical framework for bid management to drive intra-organisational coordination and competitive bids in the EMS industry.