ITT (Invitation to Tender)
An Invitation to Tender is a formal notice — standard in UK, EU, and Commonwealth public procurement — inviting suppliers to submit sealed, compliant bids against a precisely specified scope. Evaluation is criteria-weighted and strict, with far less negotiation than a typical RFP process.
ITTs sit at the formal end of the procurement spectrum: published scoring rubrics, mandatory pass/fail gates, page limits, and disqualification for deviation. They frequently follow a pre-qualification stage (PQQ or SQ), so by the time the ITT arrives the field is already shortlisted. Winning tender responses are compliance machines first and persuasive documents second — every scored criterion answered in the evaluator's own structure, evidence attached in the demanded format, and word or page limits treated as hard walls. The mechanical burden (extracting every scored criterion and mapping answers to it) is the part automation removes.
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