Why Collaboration Is on the Rise
For many SMEs, the frustration of tendering is familiar – the contract is too large, the requirements too broad, or the buyer wants experience beyond your current portfolio. The result? Small businesses often miss out on opportunities that feel just out of reach.
That’s where joint bids in tenders come in. By collaborating with other organisations, SMEs can pool resources, share expertise, and compete for contracts they couldn’t win alone. Collaboration isn’t just a short-term tactic – it’s increasingly seen as the future of public-sector procurement.
Here’s why joint bids are becoming so important, and how SMEs can take advantage of them.
1. Access to Bigger Contracts
Large tenders often set requirements that seem impossible for a single SME – from turnover thresholds to delivery capacity. Joint bids allow smaller businesses to combine resources and meet these criteria together.
- Example: Two regional firms join forces to offer nationwide coverage.
- Impact: Opens doors to multi-million-pound contracts previously out of reach.
When you enter into a consortium or joint venture, your collective turnover, combined staffing, geographic footprint and complementary services let you tick boxes you may never have managed solo.
2. Combining Complementary Expertise
Buyers like suppliers who can offer a one-stop solution. By collaborating, SMEs can provide a broader service package.
- Example: An environmental consultancy and a construction SME teaming up to deliver sustainable infrastructure projects.
- Why It Works: Each partner covers a gap in the other’s expertise, creating a stronger, more attractive proposition.
In essence, joint bids let you craft a richer narrative: “we deliver end-to-end this solution, because our partner brings X and we bring Y”. That can differentiate you from lone firms who only cover one piece.
3. Sharing Risk and Resources
Delivering large contracts can feel daunting for SMEs. Joint bids spread the workload, financial risks, and responsibilities across partners.
- Benefit: Reduces strain on one business and increases resilience if challenges arise.
- Tip: Agree resource contributions upfront to avoid misunderstandings.
Risk-sharing is often undervalued. In practice, when you collaborate, you’re also sharing contingency burdens: staffing fluctuations, financial exposure, delivery risks – all smoother when handled together. Good preparation means you minimise surprises.
4. Improving Buyer Confidence
Public sector buyers want reassurance that suppliers can deliver. A joint bid with multiple capable partners sends a powerful message.
- Why It Matters: It demonstrates strength, capacity, and reliability.
- Tip: Provide clear governance and decision-making structures in the bid so buyers see you’ve planned collaboration carefully.
Buyers are wary of suppliers who may look good on paper but lack backing; a well-structured consortium with defined roles and strong partners gives them comfort. The UK Government’s guidance for SMEs emphasises the need to show evidence, structure and capability. (GOV.UK)
5. Enhancing Social Value
Collaboration can strengthen your social value commitments. Partnering with local SMEs, charities, or social enterprises helps boost community impact.
- Example: A consortium including a local training provider to deliver apprenticeships alongside contract delivery.
- Impact: Scores higher against the UK Government Social Value Model.
Social value is now a major factor in UK public-sector tendering. Buyers increasingly look not just at price and capability but at what added community, employment or environmental benefit your bid brings. By bringing a partner that delivers local impact, you enhance your bid’s attractiveness.
6. Building Long-Term Partnerships
Joint bids often lead to ongoing relationships beyond a single contract. Strategic partnerships can open new markets, create referral opportunities, and build stronger reputations.
- Tip: Treat collaboration as a long-term investment, not just a one-off tactic.
If you win a contract via a joint bid, it’s likely many of those partner relationships will carry forward. That means future bids, frameworks and additional business may flow naturally from your network.
Organisations like Tendle support SMEs through building these partnerships and structuring joint bids that stand the test of time.
7. Overcoming Barriers to Entry
Many SMEs avoid joint bids due to fears about complexity, conflict, or profit-sharing. With the right agreements in place, these risks are manageable.
- Best Practice:
- Sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) early.
- Define roles and responsibilities clearly.
- Agree on financial arrangements upfront (profit-share, cost-share, lead partner vs subcontractor model).
- External Resource: The “Joint Bidding Guide” by the Welsh Government, a practical toolkit for suppliers plus buyers on forming consortia. (GOV.WALES)
It’s crucial to work out the governance: who signs the contract, who leads, how risks are allocated, how financials are shared, how decisions are made. If you skip those steps, what looks like collaboration could become chaos.
8. Practical Steps for SMEs to Make It Happen
Here’s how you can begin to leverage joint bids in tenders effectively:
Step 1: Identify your strengths and gaps.
List what you bring to the table – services, geographic reach, niche expertise – and determine where you’d benefit from a partner.
Step 2: Build your network proactively.
Reach out to other SMEs, local partners, social enterprises, or specialists. Attend supplier engagement events, look at previous contract awardees, and join supply-chain opportunities. The UK government guidance recommends proactively engaging before opportunities are live. (GOV.UK)
Step 3: Agree structure early.
Decide if you’ll create a special purpose vehicle (SPV), a lead-partner/subcontractor arrangement, or simply a formal consortium with shared liabilities.
Step 4: Define roles, responsibilities, and financials.
Make sure each party knows their deliverables, risk exposure, and share of profit. Document it (via MoU or contract). Clarify who owns the client relationship, who does delivery, who handles finances, etc.
Step 5: Craft the bid with the collaboration front-and-centre.
When you submit, emphasise how your partnership creates a stronger proposition: highlight complementary expertise, wider footprint, combined resources, shared risk. Tie it back to what the buyer cares about: capacity, reliability, value for money, social value.
Step 6: Set up joint governance and communication.
During delivery you’ll need regular coordination, conflict-resolution mechanisms, shared reporting and streamlined decision making. A buyer will look favourably if you show you’ve thought this through.
Step 7: Learn and refine.
After each bid or delivery, conduct a review: what worked in the collaboration, what didn’t, how can you improve? Over time your network will mature, your roles will be clearer, your joint bids will become more efficient.
9. Why Now Is the Time for Joint Bids
Several trends in UK procurement make joint bids especially advantageous right now:
- The public sector in the UK has directed more focus at supporting SMEs. For example the guide “How to bid for government contracts as an SME effectively” emphasises that smaller firms can compete if they show the right evidence and plan. (GOV.UK)
- The use of consortiums and joint bidding is becoming more explicitly recognised and supported – e.g., guides for joint tendering and collective bidding highlight benefits for small businesses.
- Complexity and scale of contracts are increasing – many opportunities are simply too large or multi-region for a single SME to handle alone, making collaboration not just helpful but necessary.
- Social value, sustainability, local impact and delivery scale are increasingly influential in tender assessments – collaboration helps you tick more of those boxes.
- SMEs that join forces now build reputational capital, processes and networks that set the foundation for future, even larger frameworks or multiple contracts.
Final Thoughts
The future of tendering is collaborative. By forming partnerships, SMEs can access bigger opportunities, combine expertise, and provide buyers with the capacity and confidence they demand.
Joint bids in tenders are no longer an optional strategy – they’re becoming essential for small businesses that want to scale and compete. At Tendle and via resources such as Aspire To Grow you can get support in building partnerships, preparing compliant joint submissions, and winning contracts that would be impossible alone.
For ambitious small businesses, collaboration isn’t a compromise. It’s the key to bigger wins
