What is a Variant Bid?

Variant Bids have become increasingly popular way of presenting your business in a more advantageous way to the buyer. Variant bids allow businesses to approach the buyer with innovative and effective solutions to their problem thus enhancing the value for money.
Tender responses typically demand for responses tailored to the tender specifications outline efficient solutions to the buyers requirement. Variant Bid is a type of tender response that involves alternative approaches to meet the buyer’s requirements, deviating from the traditional laid specification. Variant bids are more flexible then the normal bids therefore, have been increasingly preferred.

Variant bids can only be submitted if so is mentioned by the implementing agency or the tendering authority or else the bid will be abandon from acceptance. A public contract will always notify in the tender document whether a Variant bid will be accepted or not.
Variant bids can be a great way to make your business stand out by attracting more attention to your organization’s unique selling points. As a supplier Variant Bids may benefit by allowing you to propose amendments to tender specifications reflecting how you could deliver the service in a better way.

Make sure, your Variant Bid response should not loose the track of convincing the buyer on how their expectations will be met. It is more likely that the buyer would want to hear more about your services and will be asking questions for clarifications. Make sure you have compelling and convincing answers to all those questions.

Overall your response should be designed what will best suit the buyer. In case the buyer is accepting multiple bids, you can draft two tender responses; one drafted like a regular tender response complying will all the mandatory requirements and other a Variant Bid. You can use this approach to give buyer a choice in case your variant bid is rejected you are still in the league of wining tender with your regular bid. Variant bids have increasingly become popular among the bid managers giving them the freedom to present their business in a more advantageous way.