Three quotes are required. The incumbent writes the spec.

A tender with three bids can still be a single-source purchase in disguise, and the tell is not in the prices but in who defined what was being bought.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for Three quotes are required. The incumbent writes the spec.

The procurement policy says three quotes for anything above the threshold. Three quotes arrive. The incumbent comes in lowest, within a couple of percent of last year, and the renewal is signed with a clean audit trail. This repeats annually. Nobody is doing anything wrong, and yet the business has not tested the price of that line of spend in years. The reason is rarely collusion or laziness. It is that the competitive part of the process happens before the quotes are requested, at the moment somebody writes down what…

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