Jul
19
We often bid for government work ourselves and have found, over time, that the key to a successful bid process is effective communication, something that can be harder than you anticipate when working across departmental and regional boundaries. We’ve started using Basecamp (www.basecamp.com) to manage our bids and we thought we’d share how we use ...
Jul
18
Detailed analysis of expiring contracts in the North East on a graphical dashboard. More here.
Jul
2
We’ve published an open letter to Prof. Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners Lee on our experiences with open data.
Jun
15
Govmark’s research is featured in Recruiter magazine, this time on the upcoming tender for Central Government contingent labour. http://www.recruiter.co.uk/analysis/2012/03/drop-the-price-to-get-the-money-quicker/
Jun
8
The short to medium term looks difficult for the supply of agency staff into Central Government. There are 46 suppliers with contracts in Central Government, GPS will replace them with 3 prime contractors, and a number of second tier suppliers, giving SMEs a chance to still win business in the market. Spend will continue to ...
Jun
8
Capita face some interesting challenges over the next few months. Having retained their contract with the MOD for security personnel, Capita now face a challenge in the form of GPS (Government Procurement Service), who are about to go to market for a Government-wide non-permanent staff contract which GPS estimates to be worth around £500m, whilst ...
May
21
Government organisations don’t compete, so there is nothing stopping them sharing information and opinions about their suppliers. This can be difficult if you’re the type of supplier who is inclined to say one thing to one customer and a different thing to another customer. If this is what you like doing, don’t be surprised if ...
May
14
If my post here doesn’t put you off, then your next step is to understand how government buys. There’s plenty of pretty ordinary advice published by government (sorry but they don’t do really useful advice) which you can access. If you wade through all of this you’ll pick up the intricacies about what rules government ...
May
7
There’s a procurement regulation that goes something like this: if you can prove that your service cannot be provided by anyone else then it may not be necessary to go to tender and a contract can be awarded straight away. Usually when suppliers that are new to government find out about this they think “Brilliant, ...
May
2
“Our service will…” (liar, liar, liar) “We have a comprehensive…” (no you don’t, no you don’t) If you want someone in government to buy your services, assume that they don’t believe a word you say. Not one word. They won’t believe your claims for improved performance, better management, increased efficiency or return on investment. How ...
Apr
25
There’s a simple reason why you can’t sell to government: you can’t go through a process of ‘closing’ a deal without ending up in a tender process, or at very least a process of comparing competing quotes. Once you’re responding to a tender you’re locked into a bidding process which means using bidding techniques, not ...
Apr
21
The Public Services (Social Value) Bill was passed into law earlier this month and will bring a new regime into force for suppliers looking to win business from government. The bill requires buyers to evaluate contracts on the basis of their social, economic and environmental impact and then to monitor any commitments that suppliers make ...
