How to Audit Past Tender Performance

Auditing past tender performance is essential for procurement teams and bid managers who want to improve win rates, reduce bid costs, and refine strategy. A structured audit uncovers what worked, what didn’t, and why — turning past outcomes into future advantage.

Why audit tender performance?

An audit provides objective insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your bidding process. It helps you:

• Identify repeatable success factors and root causes of losses
• Reduce spend on low-probability bids
• Improve proposal quality and compliance
• Inform pricing, resource allocation, and target sector strategy

When to run an audit

Consider conducting an audit when you have enough recent tender activity to analyze (usually a 6–24 month period), or after a significant change in market conditions, a major loss streak, or a target to improve win rate by a set percentage.

Step-by-step audit process

1. Define objectives and scope

Start by deciding what you want the audit to achieve: increase overall win rate, improve success in a specific sector, reduce bid cost, or ensure compliance. Set a time range and choose which tenders to include (all tenders, only responses, or only invited bids).

2. Gather documentation and data

Collect everything related to each tender in scope:

• Tenders and RFPs
• Submitted proposals and red-team reviews
• Pricing and costing models
• Bid logs, timelines, roles and effort estimates
• Evaluation feedback or debrief notes
• Contract or PO data for wins

3. Establish KPIs and metrics

Choose quantitative and qualitative measures to evaluate performance. Common KPIs:

• Win rate = (Number of wins / Total bids) × 100
• Shortlist rate = (Shortlisted / Total bids) × 100
• Bid hit rate (wins where target margin met)
• Average bid cost = Total bid hours or cost / Number of bids
• Time-to-submission — average days from opportunity to delivery
• Compliance score — percent of mandatory requirements met
• Margin on won contracts vs target margin
• Customer feedback / evaluator score (if available)

4. Data analysis and benchmarking

Analyze the KPIs across dimensions: by client type, region, product/service line, bid size, and bid team. Look for patterns — for example, high win rates on small-value tenders but poor performance on large strategic bids. Benchmark internally (past years) and externally (industry data) where possible.

5. Qualitative review

Numbers tell part of the story. Use qualitative methods to fill gaps:

• Run post-mortem interviews with bid writers, sales, subject-matter experts, and evaluators.
• Review red-team and compliance comments — were key risks missed?
• Check alignment between sales strategy and bid pursuit decisions.

6. Root cause analysis

For recurring problems (low compliance, weak pricing, late submissions), use root-cause techniques like the 5 Whys or fishbone diagrams to identify practical fixes rather than symptoms.

7. Recommendations and action plan

Convert findings into a prioritized set of actions:

• Quick wins: standardize templates, enforce gating questions, fix common compliance gaps
• Medium-term: change pricing strategy, reallocate bid resources, update training
• Strategic: revise target markets, invest in tools or capability building

For each recommendation include owner, timeline, cost, and expected impact.

8. Reporting and communication

Create an executive summary for senior stakeholders and a detailed report for bid teams. Useful report elements:

• Top 5 findings and recommendations
• Dashboard of KPIs with trends
• Case studies of representative wins and losses
• Action plan with owners and milestones

9. Follow-up and continuous improvement

Schedule regular follow-ups (30/60/90 days) to check progress against the action plan. Make the audit part of an annual or rolling review cycle and incorporate lessons into your bid playbook.

Tools, templates and data sources

• Spreadsheets: pivot tables for KPI calculations and simple dashboards
• Business intelligence: Power BI, Tableau for trend and segmentation analysis
• Tender management systems: track bid effort, documents and outcomes
• CRM: opportunity history, client interactions, and contract values
• Survey tools: collect evaluator or client feedback

Example audit checklist

• Have all tender documents and debriefs been collected?
• Is win/loss reason captured and standardized?
• Are bid costs tracked by role and activity?
• Do we have compliance scores for each submission?
• Is there a correlation between bid score and win outcome?
• Are post-award margins meeting estimates?
• Have recurring non-compliance items been addressed?

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Relying only on quantitative KPIs — combine with qualitative insight
• Small sample sizes — extend the audit period or focus on a segment
• Not assigning owners for improvements — every action needs accountability
• Ignoring opportunity cost — stop chasing low-probability bids
• Failing to close the loop — track whether recommended changes actually improve KPIs

KPIs to track going forward

• Overall win rate and win rate by segment
• Shortlist rate
• Average cost per bid and ROI on bid investment
• Time-to-submission and on-time submission rate
• Compliance and quality scores
• Margin variance on awarded contracts

Quick 90-day action plan

Example priorities to turn audit insights into results quickly:

1. Days 0–30: Data clean-up — centralize bid records, capture missing debriefs, calculate baseline KPIs
2. Days 31–60: Implement 3 quick wins — gating questions, one standardized template, and a compliance checklist
3. Days 61–90: Train teams on new processes, deploy a dashboard, and run the first follow-up review

Conclusion

A rigorous tender performance audit turns hindsight into actionable foresight. By combining data analysis with qualitative insight, defining clear KPIs, and following through with prioritized actions, procurement teams can improve win rates, optimize effort, and make smarter pursuit decisions. Start small, document everything, and treat the audit as the first step in continuous improvement.

Need a simple template to get started? Create a spreadsheet with columns for opportunity details, outcome, win/loss reason, bid cost, compliance score, and margin variance — then run the KPIs above to see where to focus first.