Do you want to sell your goods or services to the Public Sector?
Like many commercial businesses having a contract in your portfolio can work well for your business and for growth. So the question is do you want to sell your goods or services to the Public Sector? Terms are very good, and payments virtually guaranteed providing you deliver against the contract terms and specification. As with most opportunities though, there are a number of different ways to sell to the Public Sector. We cover some here, certainly the most popular, some specialist services such as Defence are not covered in this blog post.
Research is an imperative, you need to search for and go through appropriate opportunities. From the start we have to say that there are many commercial vendors whom will charge for contracts that you can find for FREE. In fact, it is Government policy, and advice to Local Authorities that tender opportunities meeting certain criteria should be freely available without payment.
So, where would you look and then search for relevant opportunities? The first set of resources for you to check out are as follows:
- The Digital Marketplace
- Contracts Finder for contracts worth over £10,000 with the government and its agencies
- The Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI)
- Your local Enterprise Europe Network
- Tenders Electronic Daily (TED)for high-value public sector contracts in other European Union (EU) countries
- Your local council or public sector organisation – contact them about how to become an approved supplier
- Occasionally, newspaper and trade magazine advertisements.
Scotland, Wales and Ireland have separate websites for contract opportunities.
Supply digital services through the Digital Marketplace
The Governments Digital Marketplace lets you provide people, technology and user research services for digital projects in the public sector. It can be a mammoth exercise to wade through the pages of information but once you get to grips with the structure of the information all becomes much clearer.
You can apply to provide different services through different ‘framework agreements’. Framework agreements usually last for a maximum of 4 years. If your application’s successful, you can sell goods and services on the Digital Marketplace. You may be invited to put yourself forward for public sector work, but there’s no guarantee you’ll get work.
How to apply
Follow the guidance to:
- supply cloud hosting, software and support(on the G-Cloud framework), for example content delivery networks or accounting software
- provide people to work on digital projects or user research services(on the Digital Outcomes and Specialists framework), for example technical architects or user research studios
When can you apply
At the time of writing this blog post, the G-Cloud 9 framework has closed for applications. The next G-Cloud framework is expected to open in 2018. With information being published late 2017.
For further updates read the Digital Marketplace blog for the latest information.
Contracts Finder
Contracts Finder lets you search for information about contracts worth over £10,000 with the government and its agencies. You can use Contracts Finder to:
- Search for contract opportunities in different sectors
- Find out what’s coming up in the future
- Look up details of previous tenders and contracts
- You can create an account to get email updates and save your searches. However you can still search and apply for contracts without an account.
Start your research for relevant tender opportunities here https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search
If you are interested in larger contracts, then you could take a look at the European Tender Alert Service called TED (Tenders Electronic Daily). This will cover all European countries including the UK.
- Tenders Electronic Daily (TED)for high-value public sector contracts in other European Union (EU) countries.
Hopefully the answer to the question do you want to sell your goods or services to the Public Sector, is a yes.
Lastly, in addition to the BIZphit online resources, we also provide a full business consultancy service. We are experts who provide hands on practical help, either at your site or remotely. The content you see online demonstrates our expertise and our professional approach to doing things to a very high standard and helping clients to win more business. Happy Bidding!
© The BIZphit Tendering Team 2017
