“Service providers are invited to apply for tender on providing clipping path, photoshop masking and graphics services”. Nixon University is in search for service providers who provide the services described in the document for tender selection. All the tenders should be submitted before 22nd of April 2009. The applicants or image clipping service providers should have experience working on this stream for at least 5 years and above. Short listed service providers will be asked to demonstrate their work on clipping path, image masking, image retouching and graphics designing. The one who will surpass the demonstration will be selected to provide services.

Have you read about such a tender before, I do not think so. This is because clipping path, masking or manipulation is part of elaborated services. They normally appear as a part of the service being tendered as a whole and never as individual services. A large university would require services of a firm who can provide all these services to them with some good package.

Searching for tenders and applying for them is done by a lot of firms these days. Tenders are invitations for works that require excess manpower, and expertise. A firm the invites a tender always expects a unit of service to be outsourced to a third party. It would never expect a firm to provide just clipping path services for them. So it would be advised, not to waste your time on tenders if you do not have enough expertise to devote at it.

Tender selection process is tedious and rigorous. You can never expect a result in a day or two; it depends upon the selection process by individual invitees.

Projects are different from a tender. A tender is a call for a project and a project is the start of a work. Clipping path service can be useful to any buyer who just needs the background clipped but never useful to a person who will wish to have a bulk designing work outsourced.

For a tender of designing work the services that will be requested are designing and printing services. Most of the large tenders that I have noticed appear on local newspapers or through personal websites. Tenders should be approached with a positive approach that you are capable to do that. Sounds good but you should be capable to handle that work, otherwise you will notice that within no short time you are away from the short listed candidates applying for the same tender.

There are a lot of guidelines that should be followed while applying for a tender. I would like to discuss a few, as my title was tender for clipping path, image masking etc. I would keep this as part of my guidelines.

Guidelines for Designing tender:

1.Feasibility: Feasibility study is the important factor while applying for a designing tender. You should be able to understand the purpose of the tender, this is necessary to ensure that you would be able to provide the right services mentioned in the tender. Make sure the tender is about image clipping and not news clipping. If the tender is titled “tender on clipping”, it can be a tender for news clipping or other types of clipping. Before applying to the tender you should also make sure that it is related to your expertise and facilities.

2.Budget: The next important factor to be considered is the budget. Make sure that the budget of the tender meets your operating cost. In any case you must ensure “return on investments”.

3.Deadline: Make sure you will be able to meet the deadline for final submission of the tender and also the deadline for the service if any. Most of the tenders have to be submitted in the form of hard copy. You should ensure you never appear for a tender that wastes your productive time. If your tender reaches its destination after the deadline it will be rejected and will be of no use.

4.Evaluation criteria: evaluation criterion is another important factor that decides the selection in a tender. You should make sure that you satisfy the entire criterions that are mandatory and of high weightage in evaluation score. Once you are done with this stage you can move forward.

5.Mode of submission: Mode of submission can be either through World Wide Web or through post. Make sure if it is by post, you make sure it will reach the destination some couple of days before the dead line. This helps to avoid risk in case any postal delay in delivery.

The above steps will guide you to utilize your valuable time and follow a successful tender process. Make sure you appear for a designing tender and do not expect a tender on clipping path, image masking and manipulation. Finally I would like to say” Utilize your time creatively”.

SBL – Technology People Trust