Getting the Most from Procurement Portals When Selecting Your TMC

1. Check Registration Details Before You Send the Link

Before issuing a portal invitation to your preferred TMCs, ask your key contact whether they already have an account registered. Most established TMCs will have an existing profile on major platforms – but accessing it can require administrative reassignment that eats into your timeline. A quick check upfront saves everyone time.

2. Investigate the Portal’s Supplier Support Capabilities

Not all portals offer access to a real person when technical issues arise. We’ve encountered platforms where the only support option is a chatbot – and where that’s been enough to prevent us from submitting a response at all. Before committing to a portal, confirm that adequate human technical support is available to suppliers during the live event window.

3. Include All Supporting Information from Day One

Upload your travel data, scope of requirements, objectives, and travel policy as soon as the event goes live – not in stages. Bid teams spend meaningful time navigating portals to locate documents, review them, and identify questions. The sooner everything is available, the more time suppliers can spend on the quality of their response – which is what your evaluation process ultimately depends on.

4. Always Provide a Downloadable Version of the Questions

This is particularly important when you have answer-dependent questions, for example, where a “Yes” response opens additional sub-questions. Experienced bid teams will nearly always draft responses offline to protect against data loss if the portal goes down, then import answers at the end. If surprise questions appear during the final upload stage, they may not receive the attention they deserve in order to meet your deadline.

5. Review Whether Every Question Is Relevant to Travel

Many organisations use the same procurement platform across multiple categories, which means RFP templates can carry over questions built for manufacturing, facilities management, or product procurement. Health & safety questions and product quality checks rarely apply to a TMC. If your portal uses automatic scoring, irrelevant questions answered with ‘Not Applicable’ can distort your evaluation results. Removing them is strongly advisable.

6. Think Carefully About Evidence Requirements

Some portals default to requesting an attachment for every affirmative response. That works well for a question like “Do you hold ISO certification?” as an ISO certificate is easy to attach. It works less well for “How many employees does your company have?” where an attachment isn’t meaningful. Review the evidence settings for each question and switch off the requirement where it adds friction without value.

7. Provide a Downloadable Pricing Template

Pricing teams work best with a spreadsheet they can populate offline and upload on completion. Manually entering individual fees directly into a portal increases the risk of errors, and if the portal crashes mid-entry, hours of work can be lost. A clean, downloadable pricing template leads to more accurate and complete fee submissions.

8. Set Word or Character Limits That Fit the Question

A 250-word limit is entirely appropriate for confirming an ISO certification. It’s far too restrictive for explaining a duty of care programme, crisis management provision, or account management structure. Where questions genuinely require nuanced answers, give suppliers the space to be concise but complete. Artificially short answers benefit nobody’s evaluation.

9. Appoint a Named Person to Handle Clarification Questions

A reasonable clarification window is essential. It allows TMCs to fully understand your requirements before committing to a response. When all contact must go through the portal, make sure the person responsible is actively monitoring and responding throughout the live period. Prompt answers to clarification questions mean suppliers stay focused on their response rather than chasing extensions.