ANDREW Morrison set up AM Bid, which specialises in drafting bids and proposals on behalf of clients, in 2014. The company is on track to achieve £1.1 million turnover and plans to go international.
Name: Andrew Morrison
Age: 52
Position: Founder/managing director
WHAT’S YOUR BUSINESS CALLED?
AM Bid
WHERE IS IT BASED?
North Berwick
WHY DID YOU SET UP THE BUSINESS?
IT was set up to provide an outsourced bidding service for organisations and to give them options about bidding. On the public service side in Scotland, there are £12 billion contracts, part of £240bn across the UK. Private sector activity goes on as well in tendering. Organisations looking to win these contracts would have in-house bid people. I was part of that for British Gas. It can be done in-house or by external bidding specialists, or sometimes a mix of both. Lots of smaller companies don’t bid for contracts as it takes a lot of time.
Usually their specialism, like IT, isn’t in bid writing and 75% of SMEs don’t do any bidding at all. I wanted the business to help in-house bid teams at busy times and help smaller organisations that wouldn’t bid or would have difficulties. European tendering rules in 2014 said public sector contracts worth more than £164,000 had to go through the full tender process.
In 2014 the Scottish Government brought in new procurement laws which brought the figure from £164,000 to £50,000. That was to bring more opportunities into the public domain for tendering.
I thought I had an idea here to create a company that specialises in bidding. We are on track to reach £1.1 million turnover and if we reach that we will be doing what only 0.6% of start-ups achieve.
WHAT IS YOUR TARGET MARKET?
WE are working with companies of all sizes in all sectors. We don’t have to be sector specialists – if we do a bid for an IT company they are a specialist in IT and we are an expert in bidding.
If architectural services are being procured, there may only be one architect on the panel and the other four will be experts in other disciplines. That’s why it’s really important when the bid is written it is written with the audience in mind. A finance company might be looking for cost savings and a health and safety manager will have risk focus. Bids have to address audiences.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM COMPETING BUSINESSES?
WE are very different. We are Scotland’s largest bidding tender specialists. We have 80% win rates so that’s very high. We adopt a three-person bid team approach. Normally a company sends one person on a bid – a bid writer.
We have a bid writer, a manager and above them a director who is strategic, tactical and commercial. We also have a bid executive who deals with formatting, infographics and manages tender portal as well. That’s quite unique. [Bid development director] David Gray and I were housing professionals before moving into bidding. I worked in local government in Scotland for 12 years and David worked housing. This helps us in writing bids for public sector clients.
WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT RUNNING THE BUSINESS?
SPREADING the word in terms of growing the sector – only 5-10% of organisations have brought in outsourced business specialists. In the past six months we have done bids in 25 different sectors including SMEs and national businesses, and all kinds of geographies across the UK and Ireland.
We are helping organisations understand the benefits of external assistance and not having to miss out on opportunities. I have spent a lot of time building the AM Bid brand and I am very active in speaking at events and conferences. AM Bid is becoming the go-to for bidding in Scotland and we are breaking into England as well.
Scotland is a community and you can get to know people who can recommend you to other people. There’s lots of entrepreneurial support from Scottish Business Network, Entrepreneurial Scotland and the Institute of Directors.
WHERE DO YOU HOPE THE BUSINESS WILL BE IN 10 YEARS’ TIME?
WE will continue to grow with more clients and staff. We will have offices in different places – we could go overseas and could internationalise. Bidding problems are worldwide.
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