Compliance and Responsiveness

Compliance means strict adherence to the customer’s bid request, both the submittal instructions and the requirements.

Responsiveness means addressing the customer’s underlying needs. Proposals can be responsive but not compliant, or compliant but non-responsive.

Compliance with instructions means that you have followed the requested format, answered all questions, completed all forms, and submitted your response to the right person and place on time. Compliance with requirements means that you have agreed to meet bid request requirements.

Government buyers bound by law can use non-compliance as a reason to eliminate your bid. Whether they actually do eliminate your bid varies depending on the relative compliance of the other bidders and governing regulations.

Commercial buyers are free to ignore or use non-compliance as a reason to eliminate a bidder.

Assuming a responsive proposal addresses the customer’s underlying needs, your approach might be compliant or non-compliant, depending on whether your approach or solution is specified in the bid request:

A customer needs the grass cut to a specified height. Their bid request specified a weekly cutting by push mower for the calendar year.

1. A compliant but arguably non-responsive bidder could agree to cut the grass weekly for 52 weeks, even though the grass might be dormant in winter.
2. A non-compliant but responsive bidder offers to use a robot mowing system that senses grass height and cuts as necessary, thus keeping the lawn at the desired level but reducing the number of mowings and perhaps the total cost.
3. Others could offer to cut the grass weekly with a riding mower versus the push mower, also non-compliant but responsive.

 As the examples show, deciding whether to be fully compliant and responsive is an implicit question when determining your solution and strategy.