atw: Re: Statistics to demonstrate value ...
- From: Peter Martin <peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:03:11 +1100
Caz.H:
Meanwhile, as I move back a little closer to the topic...
You wrote:
> Having spent 16 years, equally in public and private sectors, writing and
> assessing
> tenders on the client side, and writing solutions & contracts on the supply
> side (on
> and off, not the full 16 years), I have quite intimate knowledge of
> procurement,
> indeed, I've even been a procurement auditor and train people, as well as
> implementing
> templates & appropriate processes, etc, etc. So, yes, truly: it IS the case
> that
> procurement evaluations take no interest in the sales team, and no one ever
> scores the
> proposal formatting - and yes that IS the way it really IS. It's a little
> mind-
> numbering to think that people believe tenders in either private or public
> sector are
> invited or assessed in a manner that would not pass the most rudimentary
> tests of
> probity. Go figure.
>
I'm not quite clear on the points you are making here, but not many of us would
suggest that somehow there is a "score" applied to formatting and style in the
process of assessing tenders.
And I happen to have been at the blunt end at one stage of one of the worst
mess-ups in tendering in this country's history, (think "under water") so I
think I've had cause to wonder about rudimentary competence in some tender
processes -- if not tests of probity.
The problem in dealing with this kind of issue is that, as we all know, the
judgement of "quality and appropriateness" of a proposal is not entirely
separable from a whole series of factors. The problem Suzy has been dealing
with, as I understand it, is trying to explain that the combination of
developers and Word 2007 is not sufficient to establish "quality and
appropriateness", however appropriate the underlying logic or value of a
proposal may be.
To take an example from another field: in my time, in another era, I had to
read and assess hundreds of film scripts and draft storylines, as candidates
for development funding. Try as one might, it was very hard at times to
ignore not just glaring spelling mistakes, but messy layouts and formatting
etc... It turned out on occasions, it was important to try to do that,
because every now and then a rough gem appeared that looked as messy and
misspelt as hell. In a situation where what was called for was a fairly fast
rejection of up to 90% or more of the material up for assessment, it was all
too easy to slip messy stuff to one side, or move it quickly into the "out"
pile. Is it really any different in the tendering process ? I'd suggest
it's pretty much the same, but people tend not to notice how basic the real
"rules" are.
No matter how hard we try, most of us, (even auditors), have trouble giving
full credit if there are flaws of presentation. And sometimes, even where we
try to ignore the flaws, our comprehension and appreciation of the underlying
material is affected. Attention wanders, and understanding goes out the door
with it. People who assess tenders etc may well believe they are just looking
at the "basics", and nothing else really matters. But they tend not to notice
that their understanding of what the basics are is affected by the manner of
presentation. (And here, I refer to "presentation" flaws as including the
lousy choice of language that developers use almost instinctively -- not just
nice fonts and layouts.)
So if the purpose of documents is to convey "quality and appropriateness",
that purpose can be simply undermined to the point where it is clear that
reasonably clear and pleasant presentation is actually an essential element of
the "quality and appropriateness" of the product. It's not something to be
"scored" independently, if in fact it serves the purpose of getting the content
read and comprehended better: it is one component of the "quality".
But why am I telling you all of this ? You're a tech writer. You know
perfectly well that it's not just a question of making something look
"pretty".... you first have to get their attention before you have a chance of
getting their dollar. And knowledgeable choice of fonts, layouts, language etc
are all presumably continuing features of your work, and the way you seek to
gain reader attention. You really can't rely on there being a tough-minded
"just-gimme-the-facts-m'am" collection of assessors out there who are going to
take hold of key facts immediately.... and certainly not if you have some
managers sitting around putting their fingers into the selection pie...
We tend not to notice how important some of these apparently obvious and
"minor" matters are -- until we are faced with a glaring example of a
presentation gone wrong.
**************************************************
To view the austechwriter archives, go to
www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter
To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field (without quotes).
To manage your subscription (e.g., set and unset DIGEST and VACATION modes) go
to www.freelists.org/list/austechwriter
To contact the list administrator, send a message to
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************
Other related posts:
