Want better submissions? Make life easier for your vendors and suppliers

Authorium’s administrative operations platform was created for public service. Every aspect of the platform takes into consideration how to better serve people who work in government, from ensuring cross-departmental teams can collaborate to delivering security that is second to none. Today, we want to take a moment to highlight some of the ways that we’re looking out for the people outside of government who apply for grant applications, submit bids for open opportunities, and respond to RFPs. 

The cost of discomfort

Consider a time when you were in an uncomfortable place: perhaps, summertime in rush hour traffic inside a car with a broken air conditioner. Just the thought can begin to raise your blood pressure and clench your jaw. When this happens, we’re not able to put our best foot forward. The same thing occurs when vendors interact with uncomfortable online portals and bid boards. You might be familiar with a disorganized, convoluted system that requires a translator to decipher, and immense support to navigate to the end of the process – let alone submit a “winning” submission.

In the best case scenario, vendors become annoyed or exhausted by the process. More often than not, poor user experience combined with unclear instructions makes highly qualified potential partners either submit incomplete documentation and/or abandon the process entirely. 

The importance of vendor care

Conversely, when funding and procurement organizations are able to provide a frictionless interface with clear instructions and expectations, government teams experience both an increase in submissions and higher-quality proposals. Both outcomes enable government programs to make awards that provide the best fit, quality, and value for a project.

Take a closer look at some of the subtle ways that Authorium’s platform supports vendors, suppliers, and applicants.

• Unified submission panel: One navigation surface with a searchable table of contents across all workbooks and a pinned deliverables view enables suppliers and vendors to focus on the information that is most relevant and easily find what they need.
  
  
• Autosave: Nothing is quite as frustrating as spending time crafting a response in a submission field, only to lose the work when getting logged out due to inactivity, interrupted wifi, or by unintentionally closing a browser tab.
  
  With Authorium’s platform, text inputs save on blur – meaning when a user clicks on something, tabs somewhere else, or closes a window – and files save on selection. There’s also a per-item save indicator and “save draft” button to manually save.
  
  
• Inline reference navigation: Make navigation simple and clear. Suppliers view solicitation documents inline and follow direct links into the submission surface, landing either on the specific response item or deliverable to complete, or on a related attachment — so they can evaluate whether to bid by following references straight to the response work required.
  
  
• Navigation aids and submit flow: A required-completion counter and a “Next Required Item” button help suppliers move through incomplete required work. While a confirmation modal previews what is being submitted with deliverable counts.
  
  
• Auto-submit at deadline: When a supplier is permitted to edit up to the submission end date and has already submitted, valid post-submit edits are automatically submitted at the deadline.

In conclusion, Authorium’s platform removes the back-and-forth between reading a solicitation and locating the work it references, automates routine saving, and reduces friction and risk across the supplier workflow. This leads to higher-quality submissions and better value for departments. To learn more about how Authorium can help your team improve vendor experience, reach out to our team.