I left school aged 16 in 1988 and worked, through a YTS, for several local small businesses, including a print shop, estate agents, solicitors and a timber yard among others.

I first learned about tendering in the mid ’90s through a marketing role at an office furniture company and most of the marcomms positions I held from then on included bid writing and management. In 2004, I moved to the other side of the procurement process, issuing tenders and contracts for a government agency.

As a contractor for most of my career, I have worked in almost every sector and industry across the UK for SMEs and large corporations.

In 2006, I started my own micro business, offering marketing, communications and tendering services and, in late 2010, I refined this to offer purely tendering support specifically to UK SMEs, under the brand name ‘Lyndsey Michaels – Bid Writing Services’.

Today, UK SMEs face more challenges than ever before. The procurement landscape is changing fast, with the automation of data being a driving force behind improvements in procurement processes across the world.

While this brings more opportunities for cross-border procurement across Europe (Brexit notwithstanding!), a focus on social, economic and environmental values as well as cost, have made tendering even more critical yet even more competitive and confusing for SMEs than ever before.

In September 2018, I launched UK Bid Writer. While still providing traditional bid writing services, UK Bid Writer is primarily aimed at helping UK SMEs understand and prepare for the huge changes digitisation is bringing to procurement, through expert consultancy, professional speaking and bespoke training.

Over the next five years, under the UK Bid Writer brand, I plan to offer even more live-bid one-to-one and team coaching, alongside a suite of easily accessible, self-paced online courses, to help UK SMEs forge ahead into this bright new procurement world.