Decision support for the pricing of services in business to business sales

We examine the bid pricing problem from the perspective of practical bid preparation and the provision of intelligent support for it. The focus of the paper is on the redesign of the bid pricing process such that it is better able to incorporate information and knowledge (in house business expertise). The aim is to provide a competitive edge for services companies which make business to business sales and are obliged to bid for most of their business through responding to invitations to tender. We describe typical bid pricing processes as they are currently structured in services industries such as the telecommunications and software industries. We also describe how they could be re-structured in order to take advantage of the new generation of intelligent decision support tools arising from the ServPrice Project.