Aspects of knowledge management applied to public bid writing : Lower the barriers of entry in public procurement by streamlinig the bid writing process

Sammanfattning: The public bidding process is often perceived as cumbersome and time-consuming, leading to low participation. Research indicates that high costs are the main reason for low participation in the bidding process. To reduce time spent on writing bids, one key factor is to reuse information in the creation of new bids. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the key aspects of knowledge management that need to be considered in the development of a public bid writing tool. The research involves a literature study followed by a qualitative empirical study that includes seven semi-structured interviews with different companies offering professional services to the public sector in Sweden. Based on the interviews, 12 different deficiencies related to knowledge management in bid writing were found. The three most frequently mentioned deficiencies were:”Lack of standardised processes for saving useful knowledge”, ”Difficult to find relevant information due to lacking structure or ineffective current system” and ”Long lead times for receiving information”. These findings differ somewhat from previous research, which predominantly has had a holistic focus regarding barriers for suppliers wishing to supply to the public sector. In contrast, this study specifically focuses on deficiencies related to knowledge management. Moreover, the deficiencies identified in the empirical study primarily processes-oriented, a reason for this is that knowledge management is a cyclical process; the output of one process is the input for the next, forming a continuous loop. However, some of the barriers identified in previous research are to some degree related to the findings of this study. For example, respondents mentioned "scarcity of administrative and management resources", as an underlying reason to the deficiency described as "long lead times for receiving information". To mitigate the found deficiencies, the development of a tool specifically designed to support the bid writing process is suggested. Such a tool can improve the quality and relevance of information, encourage more people to contribute to a shared knowledge collection, and create standardized processes.