ELATI Alexander, DBA

Alexander Elati has a Master of Business Administration & Engineering and a Bachelor of Sciences in Biomedical Engineering obtained in Germany. He currently has more than ten years of experience as Project Manager in the medical field.

In September 2021, he defended his Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (Executive DBA), on the topic of ‘Improving the bidding process through the application of project management methods: the case of public tenders for medical equipment’, under the supervision of Mr Olivier Lavastre, Professor of Management Sciences, University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble IAE.

Pr Olivier Lavastre

Improving the tendering process by applying project management methods: the case of public tenders for medical equipment

The response process to call for tenders is a very common procedure in all professional sectors. Responding to a call for tenders is a time-consuming task that requires experience, professionalism, skill, organization and discipline on the part of the team dedicated to this mission. Indeed, to remain competitive, the company responding to the call for tenders must submit an offer that is both attractive (in particular in terms of technical solutions, prices and deadlines) and achievable (in terms of the production process, resources allocated. and risks involved). However, very often the effort made is worth nothing and the company does not win the tender.
The work presented in this DBA thesis takes place within the context of the response to calls for public tenders in medical material and equipment.
In the face of the complexity of the response process to calls for tenders, we would like to offer bidding companies a managerial approach that improves this process.
This is why our topic of research was: is it possible to improve the response process to calls for tenders by applying project management methods?
To answer the research question, we proposed to use an approach based on the application of project management methods to help bidders when developing their offer to streamline the process for efficiency and better performance.
Our research approach was built by linking an empirical object which is the response process to calls for tenders, to methodological objects which are the methods used to observe and analyse our empirical object, namely, the simulation study based on three project management methods (Kanban, Lean Management and Waterfall method) and the Delphi survey, and to theoretical objects which are the theoretical references mobilized to understand our empirical object, namely, the state of the art on the response process to calls for tenders, project management methods, key performance indicators (KPIs).
The main results obtained showed that:
 according to the simulation study, Lean Management is more efficient than Kanban in the effective use of the means made available for the elaboration of the offer, the rate of errors made during the development of the offer, the duration of the process, the level of performance of the agents and the degree of satisfaction of the team in charge of the process. Whereas Kanban minimizes the time spent finalizing a task.
Regarding the Waterfall method, it is ranked the latest for the majority of KPIs;
 according to the Delphi study, project managers place the Lean Management method and the Kanban method at equally ranking and exclude the Waterfall method as a method of managing the response process to calls for tenders.
Our DBA thesis work allowed us to produce seven contributions:
 1st: a model of the response process to calls for tenders, resulting from a synthesis of the various models developed in previous work;
 2nd: a list of methods and tools suitable for the application of a project life cycle;7
 3rd: pragmatic list of SMART indicators that the company submitting to a call for tenders could apply to the different tasks in its process;
 4th: capacity building of the personnel of the study company in charge of preparing
the response to calls for tenders, through training sessions in project management methods, provided by the doctoral student ;
 5th: Lean Management and Kanban methods appear as methods adapted to the response process to calls for tenders, according to the simulation survey and the
Delphi survey;
 6th: the adoption of project management methods, as managerial methods in a company, is appreciated by the majority of project managers, and it is even strongly
recommended;
 7th and main contribution, a hybrid method of project management that would come from Kanban and Lean Management.
The possibility of improving the response process to calls for tenders and the proposal for this new hybrid method of managing this process clearly shows that we have responded to our initial problem.