The company profile that gets you through the door
Somewhere in your organisation is a company profile. It is a slide deck, it was built for a pitch three years ago, and it goes out unchanged to procurement portals, prospective partners and supplier registrations because there is nothing else. The reader is asking four questions and it answers none of them clearly. We write, design and build the corporate assets that carry your capability in the places where you are not in the room.
For organisations that must prove capability on paper
There is a category of reader who will never meet you: the procurement officer verifying a supplier registration, the partnership lead triaging approaches, the client who asked for a profile before agreeing to a meeting. Everything they conclude comes from a document.
Suppliers to government and large corporates
Where registration, vendor onboarding and pre-qualification all require a company profile and a capability statement, and an incomplete one stalls the process for weeks.
Growing firms and SMEs
Organisations whose delivery record has outgrown their documentation, still sending a profile written when they were half the size and doing different work.
Business development and partnership teams
Approaching corporates, funders or channel partners, where the first document sent decides whether there is a second conversation.
Four questions, in this order
A company profile feels like a branding document, so it usually gets written as one. The person reading it is running a checklist, and they abandon it as soon as one of the four questions goes unanswered.
Can you do this work
Stated capability, in the language of the category they are buying. Not values, not a founder’s journey, not a mission statement. What you do, for whom, at what scale, described the way a buyer would search for it.
Have you done it before
Evidence. Named or anonymised projects, sectors served, scale, duration and outcome. This is the section most profiles reduce to a wall of client logos, which proves association rather than delivery.
Who will actually do it
The people. Leadership, key personnel, registrations and accreditations, and how the organisation is resourced. A profile that never names anybody is read as a broker rather than a provider.
Are you a safe organisation to appoint
Registration and compliance detail, ownership and empowerment credentials where relevant, accreditations, insurance, references and standing. Dull, and the reason a submission is rejected without a conversation.
The documents that carry your capability
Company profile
The organisation written properly: what you do, the evidence that you have done it, who does it and what makes appointing you a straightforward decision. Structured for a reader working through a checklist, supplied in a version for circulation and a version for procurement submission.
Capability statement
The tighter document a bid library and a procurement officer actually want: core capabilities, differentiators, past performance, key personnel and company data on a small number of pages that can be updated without a redesign.
Supplier, vendor and partnership profiles
Written to the specific requirements of supplier registrations, vendor onboarding and pre-qualification, and separately for partnership and stakeholder approaches, where the argument is fit rather than compliance.
Positioning, messaging and the website
Where the documents keep contradicting each other, the underlying problem is usually that the organisation has never settled how it describes itself. We set the positioning and the core messaging first, then build every asset from it, the website included where the engagement extends that far.
From a stale deck to documents that work
Scope and audit
Share what you currently send out and who receives it. A consultant reads it as a buyer would, identifies what is missing and returns a scope and a fixed quote.
Positioning first
Before any document is written, we settle how the organisation describes itself and agree it with you. Every document is then written from that single narrative.
Writing and evidence
Drafting runs alongside an evidence request: projects, credentials, registrations and personnel. We chase the detail rather than leaving placeholders in the text.
Design and handover
Finals designed and laid out to your brand, in editable format, plus the plain text for portals and forms that will not accept a designed document. Where the engagement includes a website, build follows the approved documents.
One narrative, or the documents will fight
Most organisations discover, part way through this work, that the profile says one thing, the website says another and the capability statement says a third, because each was written by a different person in a different year. Settling the positioning first costs a little time at the start and removes the round of contradictions that otherwise surfaces at the end.
Tell us the brief, and we will scope it
Tell us which documents you need and who reads them. A consultant reviews what you currently send out and returns a scope and a fixed quote.
Designed with it, or writing only
Most corporate engagements arrive finished: written, designed and laid out to your brand, and built where the work extends to a website. Where you already have a design team or an agency you are happy with, we supply the writing to their template and nothing else changes. Say which you prefer in the brief.
Before you enquire
What is the difference between a company profile and a capability statement?
Do you design as well as write?
Can the engagement extend to our website?
What information do you need from us?
Can you write to a specific supplier registration requirement?
How long does it take?
How is it quoted?
Submitting into procurement? The personnel section is scored
A capability statement gets you registered. In a live tender, the key personnel CVs are marked against published criteria and can eliminate a bid before price is considered. Tender & Proposal Solutions covers that part of the submission.