The bid-to-win ratio measures the success rate of a company’s attempts to win sales. Bid-to-win is an important metric for businesses where substantial costs are incurred before a contract is awarded. This is often the case for sales of high value capital goods (for example, production machinery), engineer-to-order businesses (for example, power generation equipment), and project oriented businesses (for example, heating and ventilation installation). Calculate by dividing the number of bids submitted by the number of bids won.
The sales cycle can include extensive planning, design and configuration work, often with multiple versions to track changing specifications. To manage risk, selling companies can treat custom design work as a paid service, and can structure products for configuration.
Big Data is the vast amount of unstructured business data that exceeds convention processing power. It can be characterized by the 3Vs – high-volume, velocity and variety. Volume and velocity refer to the speed at which data is generated in real time from each and every aspect of operations. Variety refers to the diverse sources of this data: sensors on machines and many other assets, unconnected software applications, employee emails, social media etc.
Bill of Materials (BOM) is a listing of all the subassemblies, parts, and raw materials that go into a parent assembly. A Bill of Material is held in the organization’s ERP system and provides a link to relevant costing information held by the F&A group. The document is finalised when a new product is released to production at the end of the product development process.
Biobutanol is produced from renewable biomass sources. When produced from oil sources, it is called butanol. Biobutanol has demonstrated potential to reduce automotive carbon emissions, for example, as an additive or blend with gasoline. Recent advances with “”designer microbes”” enable use of lower-cost biomass feedstocks – for example, those with tough cellulose fibers – for biobutanol production at gasoline-competitive costs.
Biofuel is any liquid, solid or gas that is obtained from living (or recently living) materials that can be processed or ignited to provide energy. In contrast, fossil fuels are ancient organic materials that have built up eons ago and can now be mined as oil, gas, or solids (coal).
Biologics are biological products used in medicine. Unlike drugs which are chemically synthesized, biologics are created from natural source materials. Biologics include vaccines, blood, and blood components as well as products based on genetic and other biotechnologies.
Biotechnology is the use of biological processes or organisms for human benefit. Genetic engineering and the bacteria used in sewage treatment are two examples.