Bids and bid management

A bid in Pulse is a formal proposal to a customer — typically a written response with priced line items. Sageon Business gives you a full workflow from draft through submission to win/loss conversion.

Bid lifecycle

1. Draft — being worked on internally
2. Submitted — sent to the customer
3. Won — accepted (convert to project)
4. Lost — rejected (capture reason)
5. Withdrawn — pulled before decision

Create a bid

From Pulse → Bids → + New:

• Title — "Cabinet Office Cyber Resilience"
• Project — parent project (typically the BD project)
• Client name — the buyer
• Reference — your internal bid reference
• Opportunity link — pick the opportunity this bid is for
• Planned start / planned end — delivery dates if you win
• Notes

Or ask Sage

"Create a draft bid for the Surrey County Council project — client Surrey CC, due end July"

Or convert from an existing opportunity:

"Convert Cabinet Office Zero Trust to a bid, planned start 1 June, end 15 July"

Bid content

Each bid has tabs for:

• Labour — roles, days, rates → cost
• Materials — items, quantities, prices
• Milestones — payment milestones tied to deliverables
• Risks — bid-specific risk register

See Bid calculator for how the £ rolls up.

Submitting and tracking

Update status to Submitted with the submission date. Sageon Business calculates time-in-stage and flags bids stalled in submission past their decision date.

Winning the bid

Click Convert to project — Sageon Business creates a delivery project pre-populated with the bid's labour, materials, milestones and risks. Saves hours of re-typing.

Tips

• Bid early, refine later. Create the bid record on day 1 — fill in pricing as you go.
• Always link the opportunity. Orphan bids break your win-rate reporting.
• Capture loss reasons. Pattern recognition across lost bids is the highest-ROI sales analysis you can do.