How to make your authority more appealing to suppliers

The procurement marketplace is bustling. So busy is it, in fact, that it can be difficult to ensure your procurement processes are going noticed among the thousands of others released by other authorities, and that you're attracting the most qualified suppliers for your needs.

In this how-to guide, we'll run through our best practice tips on how to make your authority more appealing to prospective suppliers throughout the procurement process.

By adopting these tips, your procurement processes will have a better chance of standing out, and you can start to build your authority's reputation as an effective, efficient partner for businesses.

#1 Doing pre-tender engagement the right way

The work of making your authority more appealing doesn't start after you've published a tender.

By proactively seeking engagement and dialogue with suppliers before the tendering stage, you'll not only show that you're a receptive and active authority, but you'll also be providing opportunities for suppliers to curate the procurement process in a way that's more appealing to them.

As we laid out in our How to find SMEs to work with how-to guide, pre-tender engagement could entail releasing a Prior Information Notice (PIN), a market-sounding paper, or running a market engagement event in conjunction with these. All of these activities serve to make suppliers aware of your procurement needs before a formal tender is published, give you the opportunity to gauge market interest in your upcoming process, and, crucially, to provide an opportunity for suppliers to provide their input on how the tender's specification should look like.

The latter goal is particularly important. Don't run pre-engagement activities in a one-directional manner, simply telling prospective suppliers what to expect. Instead, actively harness these pre-tender opportunities to learn from prospective suppliers, get their input, and, ultimately, show that you're a responsive and listening potential partner.

#2 Harness the power of joint procurement

When it comes to the tendering stage, one - often neglected - way of making your authority's opportunities more appealing is to run them jointly with other contracting authorities.

Joint procurement opportunities can be more appealing to suppliers for several reasons:

• Suppliers are given the opportunity to establish working relationships with multiple authorities at once, and grow their presence.

• Joint procurement processes tend to pose more financial incentives for suppliers. This is particularly relevant for larger suppliers, who often don't even consider procurement opportunities if they fall under a certain monetary threshold.

• Suppliers' solutions become more widely adopted, utilised and talked about.

In whatever format it may take, running procurement exercises in tandem with others poses benefits not just for prospective suppliers, but can also drive efficiency and cost-savings for your own authority.

The problem lies in being able to foresee opportunities for joint procurement, and to holistically understand other authorities' procurement needs and circumstances. Tussell's procurement intelligence platform enables you to quickly see whether other authorities are currently running contracts that you could opt into once they come up for renewal.

In the example below, we've quickly identified 6 telephony-related contracts run by London-based local authorities that are due to expire between Nov 2022 and Nov 2023. If your authority is looking to procure telephony-related products or services in the next 12 months, you should reach out to the authorities behind these contracts to see whether there's scope to run these contracts jointly when its time to renew them.

To see this in action, book a 10-minute demo of our platform.

#3 Make your tenders clear and simple

Often taken for granted, a poorly written tender notice can have more impact on a prospective bidder's perception of your authority than you may think.

Be they convoluted, jargon-heavy or light on substance, a poorly written tender notice can give off the impression that your team hasn't put much thought or effort into your procurement process. Moreover, they can discourage potential applicants by requiring them to invest more time and resources into understanding what you're really after. This is especially damning for time-strapped SMEs.

Rather than simply copy-and-pasting the text used in a past exercise your team ran or writing the bare minimum, it's worth taking the time to clearly lay out your tender notices clearly. This means:

• Providing context behind the tender, including answering why it's necessary, why it's necessary at this given time, and - if relevant - how it fits into your authority's overarching strategies or objectives. 

• Explaining the methodology and criteria you'll be deploying to choose the eventual supplier.

• Clearly stating what a successful delivery of this tender looks like, and, in turn, what a successful supplier looks like.

Investing time into writing good tender notices isn't only for the benefit of prospective bidders. By drafting clear, mindful tenders, you increase your chances of attracting aptly suited suppliers, and better-crafted bids.

#4 Consider operating through framework agreements

Frameworks are being used more and more in public sector procurement. Tussell's framework analytics shows that the number of contracts identified as being called-off from a framework has increased from ~2,000 in 2016 to ~16,900 in 2021: an increase of 745%!

More and more suppliers are seeing frameworks as a key route-to-market into the public sector. Don't ignore this trend. Rather than continuing to run procurement processes of your own, harness frameworks established by other authorities.

By proactively using frameworks, suppliers will know that they're able to access your opportunities via a less competitive, more streamlined channel.

Critically, once you do start using frameworks, let suppliers know which ones you are actively using! By making this clear, you make it significantly easier for prospective suppliers to know which frameworks they should apply for to more easily do business with you. Clear communication is paramount.

The key question is knowing which frameworks to start using. It can be difficult to get a true picture of which suppliers are using which frameworks, and whether there already exists a framework that's catered for the products and services you need.

That's where Tussell's framework data comes in. To see how Tussell can help your authority to harness frameworks efficiently, and cut down on needless procurement processes, have a chat with our team.

#5 Be open and receptive to bidders

The work to build your authority's reputation doesn't stop after a tender's publication. There's lots your team can do to foster productive, positive relationships with bidders during the bidding phase.

• When you receive questions from prospective bidders, don't treat them as a hindrance - take them as opportunities to show your willingness to help.

• If the tender is a re-run of a previous contract and you're asked how the delivery of said contract went, don't shy away. Be candid and honest about the delivery's shortcomings, and how it could've gone better. Conversely, emphasise which aspects of delivery went well, and what you'd like to see repeated.

• If you ran a pre-tender engagement process, you should actively publicise how you took on board external feedback, showing that you're an authority that listens to advice.

Showing your authority's willingness to help and engage will leave a positive impression with bidders, and hopefully encourage non-successful candidates to apply for your future procurement processes.

Proactively helping bidders through your procurement process is especially helpful for SMEs, who may not be as experienced navigating public procurement as larger suppliers.

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Authorities too often view procurement in a passive, reactive way.

To become a more appealing prospect for businesses, you need to actively show your willingness to talk, take on feedback, work through preferred routes, and reduce friction throughout the procurement process.

By making your intentions clearer, and procurement exercises easier to navigate, you'll start to attract higher-quality, more apt bidders to successfully address your authorities' needs.

Becoming more appealing also means acting in smarter, data-led ways, be it when scoping out opportunities for joint procurement, or finding out which frameworks to start utilising. Tussell's procurement intelligence platform provides you with this data, and so much more.

To see why Central and Local Government procurement teams are already using Tussell, book in a demo with our team.