Looking for more revenue?
Are you considering contracting as an option?
The second item in this newsletter gives you the opportunity to assess how ready your organisation may be for contracting. Incidentally, we regard doing business or working in partnership with commercial companies to be just the same as tendering for contracts with the public sector. It may be helpful for you not only to look at how your service or product is priced, but how well your service will meet the requirements of potential customers, or whether it may need some re-design. After all, there can be nothing as disheartening as having an excellent product to offer but failing to win the business. We always need to bear in mind what the contracting process is designed to achieve, because
Buying is not just about spending money
-it's about obtaining something that we want, and that means we as the prospective supplier should think carefully about what the buyer wants. We should be careful to distinguish between what we want and what we need. For example your local authority may need to have a supplier which offers very good value in terms of price. However your research and knowledge of the local market may also tell you that their present supplier is creating lots of complaints from service users. Reading the tender specification carefully, you can see that the local authority is placing quite a lot of emphasis on the quality of service. It could be argued that although they need a good price deal, they also want a better quality of service so that complaints can be reduced. Do you hold a recognised quality standard e.g. Investors in People ? If you do, it would be worth emphasising this in your bid; if you don't perhaps it's worth considering going for an appropriate quality standard as memorable more and more buyers now look for this type of thing.
Spread your net
If you're successful in selling your services in your local area, why not look further afield?
- Other groups like yours may be struggling to compete against much larger regional or national suppliers; working with them as part of a consortium may be good for both of you.
- Remember also that most local authorities have a "threshold" value for contracts; for contracts below this level they are allowed to invite tenders from specific organisations of their choice, rather than advertise. It’s therefore worth making the effort to find out who are the key purchasing officers who deal with your type of services in local authorities and discussing contract values where they have discretion, with a view to being invited to tender.
- As discussed above it is worth your while to trying find out what additional factors they may look for from their contractors e.g. can you create employment for local people, can you source your materials from the local area etc.
- All state schools have the right to appoint their own contractors because they control their own budgets. Some schools use the education department to do this work for them, but others keep control so if you believe you have services/products which would be of value to them it may be worth having someone ring around the schools to find out who does their buying, and then have a chat with the person. This of course would also apply if a school delegated purchasing to the education department.
Free Assessment from SESC
Create a snapshot of your organisation’s intent, motivation and ability to start or increase enterprising activity by rating your organization as to how well you think its ready (or not) for contracting. Click on the Link below and complete the “Enterprise Assessment” tool, and we’ll prepare a full appraisal for you, free of charge.
Enterprise Intent Matrix Questionairre
If you have any comments or questions about this newsletter please don't hesitate to contact David Morrissey Social Enterprise Adviser (contracting)
email: david.morrissey@sesc.info
Mobile: 07913 203086
