©MORTAR AND PESTLE: BLENDING THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY PURSUIT STRATEGY

It is a well-established truism, particularly in the Public Sector world of competitive tendering, that there are only two types of winner in any competition: the company or consortium that actually wins and the teams of bidders who withdraw before sacrificing too much profit! As companies look for higher win probabilities in the tenders they choose to pursue more and more emphasis is being placed on successfully identifying, assessing and planning the opportunities to invest time, money and energy in.

There are many different and well-used opportunity assessment tools and methodologies but nearly all require a thorough understanding of: your market position, the strength of the competition and the potential of alliances. A detailed example can be found at:

Http://www.rti.org/pubs/mr-0003-0802-liao.pdf

The MORTAR and PESTLE approach looks to bring together many of the key aspects of these different methodologies into a simple and memorable form.

PESTLE is the most commonly used assessment framework that looks at the external environment influencing the opportunity. For those unfamiliar with the model PESTLE looks at the:

• Political
• Economic
• Socio-cultural
• Technological
• Legal and
• Environmental

factors at play in the chosen market that will have a direct bearing on the opportunity under assessment and the delivery environment should the competition be won. An excellent summary of PESTLE analysis is presented in Exploring Corporate Strategy 7^th Edition pp 65-8 by Johnson, Scholes and Whittington published by Prentice Hall in 2006.

^©MORTAR[1], for those with any of: a scientific training, a classical education or a penchant for making their own spice mixes, is the natural partner to PESTLE. In the context of competitive strategy MORTAR is all about the internal factors that can affect the practicality and value of pursuing a particular opportunity. The key questions within the framework are described below.

Market:

Assess the company’s position in the market where the opportunity lies, what is the company’s market share, strength, standing, and reputation?

What are the explicit and implicit customer needs and wants as expressed by the company’s business development discussions, the contract announcements and the actual tender documents?

Who are the competitors, what are their strengths, weaknesses and standing within the market, how does the customer view them?

Organisation:

How will the company approach delivery, does it have acceptable or value-adding methodologies that will stimulate customer support?

If the competition was won how would the product or service be achieved and what can be the growth pattern?

Can the company make money; is the competition worth winning from the perspective of top and bottom line profitability?

Where does the opportunity sit within the company strategy for products and markets (the Ansoff Matrix) or is it a must win contract to protect market position, company relationships or customer confidence?

Requirement:

What are the explicit and implicit requirements (as opposed to wants and needs) identified by the customer?

What are the required levels of delivery performance and quality standards?

Are there any explicit performance metrics that must be addressed?

Has the business development or tender clarification process exposed any hidden requirements that can give the company an edge?

Can the company offer any “Big Improvements For Free”, i.e., opportunities and approaches that can discriminate or differentiate the company’s offer from the competition?

Track record:

Can the company show successful previous delivery if so will their customer recommend or endorse the company’s efforts?

What is the current level of delivery performance on contracts of a similar nature and are the measures sufficiently robust to provide one or more case studies?

Can the company demonstrate in the tender process methodologies, flowcharts and metrics that prove that the work can be done and delivered effectively with efficiency and value?

Alliances:

Is the chance of success greater if the company establishes an alliance, JV or SPV with a potential competitor or a player from an adjacent or similar market segment?

If the possibility of an alliance increases win probability is the company confident enough in its existing relationships or prepared to invest time an money in developing new relationships to create a profitable operational alliance?

Can the company broaden its coverage and increase its competitiveness by entering into an arrangement with one or more organisation and would the customer condone or resist such a move?

How will the business model improve and profitability increase by using an alliance strategy rather than a go-it-alone approach?

Relationships:

Does the company already have a relationship with the customer base and if so how good is that relationship?

Does the company have or can it establish contacts with all the appropriate levels within the customer’s organisation?

Can the company map the customers, stakeholders, buyers and gatekeepers i.e. just how much does the company understand the customer for the opportunity?

Does the company have sufficient insight into the customer’s wider community of advisors, influencers, political connections and community relations? Any or all of which will influence the outcome of the competition

While the MORTAR and PESTLE may not provide the comprehensive coverage sought by some organisations it does provide an accessible, memorable and readily used framework that should help business make the right choices when considering the pursuit of competitive tenders.

Happy Blending,  Alan Morpeth August 2015

[1] Based on an original idea by Alan Morpeth in Winter 2010