Procuring goods and services from SMEs and local suppliers boosts regional economies and drives social value, with contracting authorities benefitting from the additional expertise, talent, and regional knowledge found within their own communities.
Whilst there is impetus to support small and local businesses, and targets in place, SMEs still experience challenges when competing for public procurement opportunities. To overcome these challenges, many local authorities have adopted their own programmes to better support SMEs, and of course, the Procurement Bill aims to make it easier for smaller businesses to bid for and win contracts.
One of the most significant barriers is the lack of accessible information throughout the procurement process and an inability for Local Authorities to share this information both internally to procurement colleagues and externally to prospective suppliers.
Having the ability to identify relevant SMEs and regional suppliers at the outset and more easily report on spend with these organisations will enable Local Authorities to better engage with prospective suppliers and increase the chances of participation.
Oxygen Insights take open data from transparency of invoiced spend, decision-making and contracts and turns it into meaningful intelligence. Additionally, Insights SME and Regional Analysis supports Local Authorities at the 2 key stages identified above.
Where procurement via ITT has been decided, SME and Regional Analysis displays your local public sector suppliers by category to identify small and local suppliers to invite to bid. You can drill through to see details of the suppliers or categories. Additional information such as the supplier’s client profile, current spend as a % of total revenue, and financial stability can be built into this analysis, enabling you to make informed decisions about prospective suppliers.
Early engagement and communication with suppliers can also help break down barriers and reduce the chances of SMEs dropping out of the tendering process.
Throughout the life of a contract, you will be looking to monitor and improve contract performance and manage supplier relationships. SME & Regional Analysis lets you understand, and monitor, spend with SMEs and Local Suppliers and compare against objectives.
Many local authorities find reporting on SME spend to be time consuming. To reduce demand on valuable resources, the reports can be exported, providing a quick solution for Procurement to report on SME / Regional Spend.
The Procurement Bill will drive a lot of change, but these tools can help Local Authorities move forward quickly to provide better opportunities to SMEs and regional businesses and significantly reduce reporting demands.
You may also be interested in:
TendAlert – Encourage your suppliers to make use of TendAlert, providing free public tender alerts direct to their inbox every day so they’ll never miss out on an opportunity.
