Danish Rail - New Trains

Our client, Alstom, reached out for our support knowing they had ground to make up to beat their competitors.

They had the right offering to win this bid for 100 trains and 15 years maintenance contract, so why were they struggling to help the end client, DSB, see it?

Starting right at the beginning.

We love talking to our clients when they get the first notification of a ‘must-win’ project. It’s not always possible though. We always ask ourselves what can we offer our client to help right now, going forwards and at the end?

Getting a bid response right is about great writing which links benefits of the solution to key client issues, but it isn’t writing alone. The best engineers, innovators and constructors have the knowledge but often struggle to communicate it so every reader can understand the concepts.

People to connect a bid

That’s where Blue Edge stepped in, bringing a team including a bid lead, writers, integrator, formatters and designers. Our team integrated seamlessly, bringing insights to challenge what had been previously submitted. They found every opportunity to maximise scores using bidding best practice, where one point can be the space between winner and second place.

Our delivery team.

Collectively, our team delivered on different aspects, whilst also writing, to improve at INDO2 and BAFO. For example:

  • Bid Lead – provided the strategic direction to keep the senior team on track and help them be truly innovative
  • Bid Integrator – knew all 2000 pages of the bid and was the main hub of information for everyone
  • Bid Writer – worked with subject matter experts, travelled between the German team and Paris team so nothing was lost in shared responses, researched and understood every viewpoint and technical statement linking them to innovations, and crucially challenged teams to think differently about bidding
  • Bid Designers – took diagrams, graphs, statistics, the design book, and executive summary making them easy to read, and crucially, easy to understand, all within the campaign style.

Our campaign

We knew Danish travelling customers want a train which reflects the modern cultural picture for a wide variety of journey types. Our campaign and messaging supported these desires and demonstrated Alstom’s expertise in customer journeys, showcasing how the two sides are entwined.

Design Book

One area our client needed to improve on was how they communicated their design response, something quintessentially Danish. Alstom had engaged Johannes Torpe Design Studios to be involved in giving the solution a modern Danish design ethos. We translated this into a design book which took the reader on three user journeys, using the campaign language and style to inspire readers and help them imagine Alstom as part of their future.

Connected to our clients

Moving a bid response from ‘in the running’ to winner is no easy task. We were fortunate that Alstom understood communication needed to be the most important element of the next submission, using a new approach to make up lost points.

As a regular client who trusts us with their most important new business opportunities, our partnership is what makes winning bids a frequent result for Alstom and Blue Edge.