As part of our Employee Spotlight series, we’re excited to chat to Ozone API employees from various departments and countries around the globe. This series aims to give you a closer look at the diverse and talented individuals who make our company thrive.
From colleagues in our product team to our sales managers, in each article we’ll be posing a series of questions to a different team member. Join us as we celebrate the people who drive our success and make Ozone API a great place to work.
This time we’re featuring Simon Blundell, our Bid Manager. Simon transitioned from journalism to bid management, where he now leads bid services at Ozone API. He chats to us about collaboration, research, and how he sees AI as a future aid in simplifying the process.
Can you tell us a little about your background and how you got into Bid Management?
I once dreamed of becoming a sports reporter, I considered it my best route toward free entry into football grounds, so I studied Journalism at University. And whilst I did work for Arsenal for a period, it was actually at an accountancy firm where I discovered bid management, putting my degree into practice by helping Partners write their business proposals. From there I took on more specific Bid management roles and started learning about the best practices for the management and strategy elements of the job.
What brought you to Ozone API?
Quite a few things to be honest, the depth of knowledge within the company, and the opportunity to develop a bid service from the ground-up were both very attractive, but the company culture really stood out to me.
Being globally based we are objective oriented, with nobody clock watching and a real emphasis on teamwork. I think the culture developed at Ozone API ensures that people are set up to succeed both in their personal and professional lives, with the commercial successes we’re enjoying a reflection of that balance.
You sit in the marketing team at Ozone API, is there much cross-functional collaboration with other departments in your role?
Yeah, collaboration is a huge part of the job to ensure that our responses to clients are always bang up to date. Clients can ask anything from how we think PSD3 will influence the industry to what we’d do in the event of another pandemic plus everything in between, so it’s a lot of content.
Therefore, it’s a huge part of my job to collaborate with many people in the business, posing numerous questions to them, and keeping our content up to date to ensure that we’re always responding accurately.
Everyone has been hugely accommodating and absolutely lovely when I’ve asked for information though.
How would you summarise your role to someone who has never heard of Bid Management?
If this was a job interview I’d say It’s my job to internally organise, arrange and probe very busy people for their knowledge and then translate that passion, power and potential into a language the client understands.
Between you and I though, it’s making sure that we’re always well prepared with strong, relevant content, whilst keeping people on task as deadlines approach.
How do you approach tailoring each bid to fit a client’s specific needs?
Ultimately it’s research. In an ideal world, the tailoring happens through conversations with the customer well before an RFP; discovering their pain points and what they’re trying to achieve with a solution. You’d then aim to develop common ground on values, pricing and culture. In this ideal situation, you would use these conversations as a foundation for the response, regularly linking back to them when answering questions.
In reality, we do sometimes have to work with tight deadlines, and therefore have to prepare an RFP very quickly, which is a little more challenging, but that’s all part of the fun of working in a growing global company!
What’s the most satisfying feeling: submitting a perfectly polished bid or winning one?
It has to be submitting a perfectly polished bid. Winning is obviously a nice feeling and very important to the business, but from a bid management perspective there are so many external factors dictating whether you win an opportunity or not. I’ve had many experiences post-submission where clients have decided to stop pursuing a solution without warning, have focused solely on a race to the bottom, or where key decision-makers—whom the bid team had aligned with—suddenly left their roles.
If you stick to your bid process though, you know you’ve given the bid the best opportunity for success, and I find that’s always more satisfying.
If you could invent a tool or app to make bid management easier, what would it do?
Personally I think it’s already on its way with AI. A lot of the heavy lifting with Bids is responding to the 40-50% of questions that crop up on every RFP, but are asked in slightly different ways. AI has the ability to take care of those responses whilst helping to build the foundation for the remaining responses. This gives me and other bid managers more time for reviewing, fine-tuning and optimisation of responses. The tech should allow Bid Managers to submit a greater number of effective, compelling bid responses in a far shorter time frame.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to pursue a career in bid management?
Be deadline driven, develop an eye for breaking down tasks into their component parts and invest in a good stress ball.
What’s your go-to snack or drink during intense bid deadlines?
I’d like to say it’s lots of fresh water and healthy snacks, but it’s more black coffee and biscuits than I’d care to admit to.
