Readiness, feasibility and confidence: how to help bidders to better develop and assess their offers

In a bidding process, the bidder must define and evaluate potential offers in order to propose the most suitable one to the potential customer. Proposing attractive but also realistic offers to various potential customers is a key factor for the bidder to stay competitive. In order to achieve this, the bidder needs to be very sure about the technical specifications and the constructability of the proposal. However, performing a detailed design is resource and time-consuming. This article proposes the foundation of a new framework which can help bidders to define the right offer: (i) in the context of a non-routine design process, while avoiding a detailed design and (ii) taking into account two new indicators that reflect the bidder’s confidence that they can meet the commitments once the offer is accepted. The first indicator (OCS) characterises the Overall Confidence in the technical System, while the second one (OCP) gives the Overall Confidence in the delivery Process. Both OCS and OCP are based firstly on two factual objective indicators, Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for OCS and Activity Feasibility Level (AFL) for OCP, and secondly on two human-based subjective indicators, Confidence In System (CIS) for the OCS and Confidence In Process for the OCP. An illustrative application shows how this framework can really help bidders define an offer, while avoiding detailed design and enable them to evaluate the confidence level in each potential offe

A Case Study on Human Resource Management Practice of a Sport Organization

Human resource with the adequate ability and skills is of decisive importance in all organizations, irrespective of the field of activity in which they operate. It is no different with the life of sports organizations. The human resource management of sports organizations is peculiar which is influenced by, on the one hand, the operating form of an organization, on the other hand, the nature of employment. Those well-known jobs can be also found in the sport organizations which are necessary to operate an organization and carry out the general tasks, at the same time, the amateur or professional athletes turn up as specific human resources. Aim of the study is to explore the specific characteristics of the human resource management of a particular organization, namely Debreceni Egyetem Atlétikai Club Sport Nonprofit Közhasznú Kft. (University of Debrecen Athletic Sport Non-profit Public Benefit Purpose Ltd., hereinafter: DEAC Ltd.), primarily focusing on the traditional HR functions. After reviewing the domestic and international specialized literatures, the practice of the examined sport organization will be described by means of case study, document analysis and managerial interview methods. Based on the results, it can be determined that there is no separate HR manager in case of the examined sport organization, due to its size, but the managing director carries out the tasks as an economic and HR manager in one person. From the aspect of organizational operation, the practice of HR functions is similar to the practice of other SME business organizations, at the same time, the management of athletics as human resources means its specific characteristic where the managements of labour supply, career and talent has other interpretation

ISIEM: a methodology to deploy a knowledge-based system to support bidding process

When responding to calls for tenders, companies must elaborate on relevant bids relative to the needs and expectations of customers (for example, in terms of price and delay). We built and deployed a knowledge-based system (KBS) to aid companies when developing bids. Based on a pre-defined generic bid model, a methodology to support companies when deploying the KBS is proposed in this paper. To capture, formalize, and reuse knowledge relevant to bids, a combination of several approaches, such as taxonomy, constraint satisfaction problem, and case-based reasoning, is proposed. The methodology is composed of five steps: Initialization, Specialization, Implementation, Exploitation, and Maintenance. A case study from a company building electrical parts of harbor lifting devices illustrates our proposal and allows validating the proposed methodology.Outils logiciels et ProcEssus pour la Réponse à Appel d'Offre

Implementing Robotic Process Automation in Sales Support

Digitalization has been shaping the ways how we work and live for a considerable length of time. Businesses’ competitiveness is partially determined by their capability to adopt and leverage new technologies. One of the latest trends in digitalization is the automation of repetitive, low-cognitive human tasks in white-collar jobs. A tool that was created to automate low-cognitive hu-man tasks, Robotic Process Automation (further only RPA) utilizes software robots to address this topic. RPA gains attraction because it is easily scalable and implemented at a rather low cost and the use of it doesn’t require prior programming skills. The implementation of RPA has been studied to some extent, however, the studies of implementation in sales and sales support are lacking. Notably, the automation of sales tasks is lagging far behind other business functions, even though a great deal of sales tasks could be automated. To address the limited understanding of automation in sales this study’s objective was to investigate the impact special features on sales might have with automation on a practical level, and the influence of human factors in RPA implementation and addressing employees’ commitment factors to ensure the use of RPA. Reaching the targets of the study was ensured by answering the following research questions: 1) What are the prerequisites for the automation of sales support processes, 2) How to ensure employees’ commitment to RPA, 3) What kind of resources are needed from the organization in the RPA implementation, and 4) How to prioritize the tasks to be automated with RPA. The study was conducted as a single case study at a Finnish technology company. The primary data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and the interviewees were all employees of the case company with a relevant role to the studied issue. Multi-sourced secondary data was used to ensure data triangulation and broaden the insights of the results provided. The data was analysed through a thematic analysis. To understand the main empirical findings some prevailing facts must be known. First, RPA is to be utilised by the Sales Support team for the first time, but RPA is not new in the company. However, the Sales Engineers (further only SE) have been provided with RPA training before this study took place. Second, the RPA process at the case company relies on the individual users and their motivations as it is not mandatory for SEs to use RPA. It was discovered that SEs’ lack of motivation to use RPA is the main reason hindering the automation process in Sales Support. This could be addressed by increasing SEs’ knowledge of RPA by improving the provided training courses and by naming a key user or users to support SEs with the automation design. The importance of the key user should diminish when the use of RPA stabilises. It is also suggested to make the use of RPA temporarily mandatory through KPIs because the voluntariness of use has not led to the adoption of RPA as intended. Lastly, the first tasks to be automated should be prioritized based on task simplicity, as it will support the learning of the individuals and minimize the risk of systems operations being compromised. This study contributes to the literature by increasing the understanding of the factors affecting the new technology implementation within sales and confirming some prior findings in the rather new field of study. In practice, the findings of the study advise managers on how to deal with and support already overloaded salespeople in RPA adoption. The study also investigated the voluntary use of technology at work which has been previously associated with private life only in the literature but could be further studied in the future. The study despite aiming for generalisability covers only a niche area of sales and thus a general study of RPA possibilities in sales could be of interest