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Something has changed

In recent years, Tender Management has matured a lot, centers of excellence (CoE) have been created all over the globe to centralize and make the entire tendering process more efficient, and the vision of companies has shifted from national to regional (e.g. EMEA, Middle East, APAC, North America and Latam) or global. In addition, several international conferences are starting to treat the topic with some relevance — there is a long way to go.

For MedTech, Pharma and Biotech companies - FBKs Customers - it is no longer acceptable to waste time and money in such a critical process due to inefficiencies related to manual activities, spreadsheets or not dedicated tools. This is why many large, mid and small organizations all over the world are exploring Tender Management solutions on the market with more interest.

Where FBK fits in

Most of the Tender Management tools - and there are not many - focus on improving single phases of the tendering process without giving continuity to the real operational flow, creating in some cases even greater fragmentation. FBK was the first Tender Management vendor that enable companies to manage in a simpler and continuous way the end-to-end tendering process in order to streamline it. The vision that Tender Management software involved many people, departments and stakeholders everyday helped FBK to become the market leader. Or Pioneers as many call us.

We have started studying the inefficiencies in the Life Sciences tendering over 25 years ago and most of the problems that companies had to face have not changed: poor usability and data traceability, no communication between teams/departments, limited visibility on market's trends and competition and much more.

However, as the field matures, the focus is shifting from pure operative enhancement to a more strategic and predictive approach based on the use of countless amounts of data. This trend requires the implementation of a complete and powerful Tender Management Software that is used in the full tender lifecycle — which in turn requires closer collaboration between the business/change management of customers, end users and software suppliers.

What’s next in Tender Management:

Operational to strategic

From a strictly operational management of tenders focused on the present to a more strategic and predictive one projected towards the future. This smart approach helps the business to broaden its horizons by obtaining greater visibility on the evolution of the market and competitors with results on performance.

However, it may not be so obvious, the need to have cutting-edge tools to collect and process large amounts of data with the aim of grounding predictive scenarios to respond in real-time to what-if questions?

Companies that leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) to process and analyze vast amounts of structured and unstructured data are better equipped to identify trends and make optimized decisions on where, when and how, on time, and at the right price. FBK AI & ML proprietary models are constantly learning to help Life Science & Healthcare vendor build more resilient tendering business and prepare for the future.

Tendering need to be actionable

The ultimate goal is clear: to improve the end-to-end tendering process, not just to provide sophisticated analysis results, tendering need to be actionable. This requires advanced and forward-looking workflows to quickly connect internal/external data sources with key actions to manage the entire tendering process.

We are excited to see how the Tender Management field is embracing new technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to make workflows increasingly automated, fast and efficient.

From isolated processes to shared processes

To manage a complete tender flow, it is necessary to involve different departments within the company because each contributes to complete one or more tasks: analysis of opportunities, selection of products, definition of prices, approval, drafting documents just to name a few. Therefore, the opportunities for improvement are many and everywhere.

That said, each company manages the process in a personalized way according to its structure and business model. This means that the Tender Management software must be flexible to meet the various needs of the market with standard out-of-the-box functionality and must holistically connect the various business functions involved in the process, helping to accelerate the sharing of data and task. This allows to have a complete view of the tendering process from different angles.

Why FBK?

FBK is the market leader in Tender Management solutions for Life Sciences & Healthcare and is well-positioned to take advantage of the key trends mentioned above. The FBK CM|XS Suite Platform transform the way companies manage bids & tenders by moving processes and data from siloed spreadsheets to a single platform. The concept of eXtensibility allows a wider variety of options and functionalities in the spirit of an integrated framework connected with all tendering stakeholders to align everyone on the main objectives and goals.

FBK has many customers that use Tender Management Software at an unprecedent scale, both in terms of data - handling thousands of products - and numbers of user & countries - up to 80 active countries.

As mentioned in past blog articles, Tender Management solutions will increasingly adopted inside Life Sciences & Healthcare organizations. Therefore, FBK is it's the right choice at the right time.

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Milan, June 2022.

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