To participate in a bid your documentation must be in French. If you decide to go with English or your local language you need to have a “copy conform” translation. This solution means the keeping of two bidding documents in sync. The later work language will also always be French, the language skill should be emphasized ideally at the individual level in the answering phase.
It's a long-term process of gathering information about similar bids previous winners and losers. It is important to have an overview about processes and services that are not currently available on the market:
- Modern client management portals (Jira Service Desk, ServiceNow, LiveAgent ect ..).
- End and admin user-oriented UI / UX.
- Environmentally friendly solutions.
Each bid is different, which requires a team and content that addresses each vendor individually. This sounds logical, but there are still bid documents in France that have not been modified for decades and are still being used (and sometimes win the bid). To compete with these local bidders, foreign companies must play on added values and the vendor must feel that this bid document was just written for him.
Sometimes bids that do not really answer the vendors needs win because they are locals and there is a general apprehension of foreign companies.
Overall the goal is to dispel fear of foreign companies with language and work culture.