Doing Business with Higher Education Institutions

Why The Higher-Ed Market Matters

If you’re thinking about higher-ed, you might be wondering what kind of products they purchase at universities, community colleges, etc.  Many people are surprised to learn that higher education procurement seeks out goods and services varying from small components to large construction projects. Some examples of procured items from institutions seen on BidFinderEdu’s watch list include:

• Custodial Services
• Cleanrooms, Components, and Supplies
• Computer Systems for entire computer labs
• Bookstore Management Services
• Full HVAC Rebuilds
• Roofing Replacements and More!

Outside of the list above, it is important to note that many universities and higher-ed institutions have consistent, stable funding and prefer to make long-term relationships to ease the burden of procurement in the volumes they seek.

For information on what you can expect from individual higher-ed locations, coming soon is our full directory. This directory will have significant information for many institutions, along with insights related to when we have seen the most bid requests from said institutions.

How University Procurement Works

Registering as a University Vendor

Registering as a vendor is often a crucial step in doing business with higher education. Unfortunately, most portals are going to require that you do this step separately.  The good news, however, is that most of these portals and systems require the same information.

Common Steps Amongst Most Portals:

1. Identify target university’s vendor registration page.
2. Gather your company’s most recent and valid W-9, insurance information, certifications where applicable, and company references.  Some higher-ed locations may also require more sensitive information such as financial stability information.
3. In some cases, it may be beneficial to evaluate and complete any small business recognized minority or diversity information, if applicable.  Universities may have active programs related to spending that could provide additional resources to your business.

Example registration at University of Wyoming: https://www.uwyo.edu/procurement/supplier-guide/supplier-self-registration.html

In the future, our university directory will provide vendors links for as many bid portal registrations as possible.

Understanding Bid Types and Documents

There can be a bit of a learning curve related to identification of varying bid types and learning to read them properly. A whole book could be written on this topic, but we’ll try to work in a crash course here to get you started. 

RFP, RFQ, IFB, RFI, Sources Sought – What They Mean

How to Read a University Bid Package

University bid documents can look intimidating at first — full of legal terms, attachments, and procedural checklists — but once you know what to look for, the structure is surprisingly consistent.

Most higher-education solicitations follow a similar pattern. Below is a breakdown of the key sections and what to focus on as a vendor:

Pro Tip: Be sure to highlight as you read through a bid package anything that may change your price – or the documents you supply with your bid.

Creating a Strong Capability Statement

Building Relationships with Procurement Offices

Building relationships with procurement offices is a crucial step in becoming more involved with Higher-Ed bidding. There are a few things that should be kept in mind regarding professionalism in communication that can help foster those relationships.

1. Try not to be too pushy.  Communication should be kept professional and, while requests for updates are expected, it’s best not to contact more frequently than once a week on most solicitations.
2. Many universities and their funding sources have outreach/vendor days.  It’s best to attend these if you have aspirations to bid on their projects.  Showing interest in these public events typically encourages those running the events to make further introductions to their team members which can be quite valuable.
3. When you do reach out for updates, be sure to include the solicitation number and brief title in your subject line.  That helps the procurement contact know what this is about before even jumping in to respond.

In addition, many universities maintain public contact lists.  BidFinderEDU maintains a list of publically listed contacts and this will be available as our Directory goes live.

Funding, Grants, and Partnerships

Higher Ed Universities often get funding via grants and other competitive public/private funding.  A few things are worth touching on related to this.

• If the bid is regarding a public grant, you can get some details over whom is holding the grant and the contacts available via grants.gov.  This is an invaluable resource and easily searchable.
• While some grants and partnerships may be short term funding, many projects will be long term with multiple needs over time. Keeping in touch can be a great idea in the case of long-term grants.

Common Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them!)

Like all things in life, there are some mistakes that are easy to make, but careful planning and attention to detail can help avoid the most common. Let’s look at the top 3 mistakes that people make when detailing with public bids from Higher Ed Universities;

1. Submitting bids late: This is a big no-no, and often will be subject to disqualification.  It’s important that if you’re interested in bidding that you look at how long it would take you to prepare your response.  If you think that you are a great fit for the bid but might not be done in time – go ahead and ask for the appropriate amount of time you need to get that submission in with suitable time for them to do so.
2. Incorrect Document Submittal Formating: Make sure to pay attention to the detailed bid request information.  When it’s important – the procurement team will provide you with an “instructions to bidders” section or document that will outline the important things/order to supply your bid. This is done in this manner to provide some consistency in review for the procurement team.
3. Pay Attention to Revisions / Addenda: It’s easy to get sucked into the bid process itself and get some information together, but you really need to pay attention to the bid link for any updates to the bid documents.  This will ensure you don’t miss any information updates such as detailed drawing additions, requests by the customer, or even notices of furnished (provided) equipment.

For more detail on these and other common mistakes, check out our upcoming page for the Top 10 Mistakes Vendors Make with Higher-Ed Bids.

Recap of the General Process and Next Actions

Now that we have gone over a run-down of what’s involved in Higher Ed bid sourcing, let’s recap what we’ve learned.

1. Prepare Capability Information
2. Identify Target Universities for Bids
3. Register in their system of choice
4. Monitor and Find a bid worth submitting for your team
5. Prepare the bid and send (ON TIME)
6. Follow-up as necessary in reasonable increments.

As you continue your higher ed solicitations journey, be sure to consider our active bid list as a source of inquiries, and soon we’ll have our Membership Toolkit, which will include many jumpstart features such as templates.

Resources and Tools

Whether you’re just starting to explore university procurement or you’re ready to refine your approach, the following tools and references can help you move from research to results.

Internal BidFinderEDU Resources

External References

Next Steps

• Be sure to check out our university directory once available.
• Bookmark this page for future reference.

Be sure to check back at this guide every now and then for revisions and new resources as they come available!