The Centre for Tendering

03/11/2019

01/11/2019

The Centre for Tendering, experts in public sector selling, is recruiting 15 Greater Manchester businesses (on a first come basis) to participate in an action research project, prior to the launch of its ground-breaking CLEVER TENDERING programme, priced at £3,500 per company. You pay £500.
You get:
• Expert in-company advice and senior team discussion time with Centre for Tendering co-founder Dr Paula Turner, academic researcher and management educator in sales and tendering capability
• A confidential review of company selling and tendering practices that will highlight your productivity ‘drift’ and help you in plan new accelerator activities in your own business context.
• A benchmarking Board report of current practice and recommendations for goal setting based upon the CLEVER TENDERING diagnostic capability model
• Optional access to a bundle of productivity immersion coaching workshops for selected senior staff with reflection ‘homework’ and dynamic mapping tools.
Note: MD participation is mandatory for the review to identify and commit senior team participation to achieving programme goals.
The Centre for Tendering gets:
• The chance to test and develop its new suite of materials
• The chance to work alongside great businesses like yours, to help grow your sales.

Book online now https://centrefortendering.com/book-a-review

31/10/2019

Why tenders are like Halloween pumpkins
One is orange and scary and sits on your doorstep. The other sits on your desk or inbox – usually a pile of tender documentation screaming to be scrutinised, and at the same time terrifying the reader with its resource demands to complete every question.
We carve pumpkins to have ‘faces’ or personalities, and we should do the same with our tenders. Do they represent how you want to express your business and the product/service solution? Can we light our businesses up inside with killer processes and routines that attract attention?
Happy Halloween everyone :)

27/10/2019

Is small firm tendering performance just a UK problem?
It is well documented how small businesses from across the UK can grow their turnover and workforce by becoming a government supplier (HM Government,2017; OECD, 2018). Yet public resource efforts to close the productivity gap focus on removing barriers that are not resulting in, or designed to, disrupt SME tendering capability attempts to win public sector primary contracts.
SMEs in the UK tend to be concentrated in lower value sub-contractor positions within public sector contracts. This position is amplified in over 30 countries (OECD, 2018) which indicates global market failure crying out for evidence-based innovation, applies the brakes to business growth and stifles innovation.
We are getting ready to launch The CLEVER TENDERING programme – the public sector sales programme for ambitious owner managers of small firms. Watch this space for more details.

21/10/2019

Government targets for SME spend – have you spotted the smokescreen?
Procurement is the single biggest component of government expenditure, yet SMEs are not sharing adequately in the growth of the economy Roughly one in every three pounds that the UK public sector spends is spent on procurement. Total employment in SMEs is 16.3 million; 60% of all private sector employment in the UK.
There is scarce evidence that the government target to spend 33% of its £264n budget with small firms will be achieved without creating disruptive change. Small firms remain disadvantaged by accessing too little of public sector spending and by being concentrated in lower value sub-contractor positions. Millstream Associates (2018) estimate the SME community is likely to have missed out on £33.5 billion worth of government contracts in the ten years to 2022.
So, wouldn’t a more meaningful target see small firms winning more primary contracts that are within their grasp?
Current UK government SME enablement activities (e.g. SME panel, Meet the Buyer, Digital Marketplace) are some moves to simplify and demystify tendering processes but they focus on improving macro-conditions, and as ‘barrier removers’ are not equipped to serve the requirement to build firm-level characteristics of high productivity tendering performance.
Where lies the answer?
Public anchor institutions absolutely need to increase sensitivity towards engaging small firms in their supply chain, but I suspect the real sea-change will be small firms grasping the nettle, building their tendering capability, and kicking ass with their innovation.

20/10/2019

We are excited to be a North West UK innovation start up. We're all about building tendering capability and productivity inside businesses that sell to the public sectors using our research and experience as management educators.

Coming soon... The CLEVER TENDERING Programme. Ten spots for ten ambitious firms. (More details to follow)

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