The concept of competitive bidding. The advantage of a company obtaining a competitive bid is that the suppliers know they are in competition and they must submit a bid that provides some profit but not submit a bid that is too high to lose the contract. When I worked in public accounting, prior to the SOX Act, auditing firms could provide multiple services to clients. As a result, we would bid the audit work intentionally low. However, once we had our foot in the door, the firm would offer other services such as the preparation of the corporate tax return and other consulting services. Has anyone been involved with reviewing bids?