22 April 2009 – Thistle Hotel, Glasgow

Developing your Business

The GO Scottish SME Procurement Conference – Rising to the Challenge – provided delegates with important information on how to bid for public sector contracts and win business more effectively.

In recent times, Scotland has launched numerous initiatives designed to make the relationship between buyer and supplier more equitable and transparent. Progress is being made – but there can be no doubt that the public sector is and always will be a demanding customer, and that it will continue to operate in a regulated environment which can appear daunting, frustrating or inaccessible to SMEs.

The GO Scottish SME Procurement Conference – Rising to the Challenge – held recently at the Thistle Hotel, Glasgow and organised by BiP Solutions, highlighted the ways in which SMEs can grasp the contract opportunities currently available in the public sector and how collaborating can improve SMEs’ chances of winning business in many instances.

Speakers at the conference included Professor Russel Griggs OBE, Chairman, CBI SME Council; Barry Graham, Head of the Central Government Centre of Procurement Expertise (CGCoPE); Pauline Wilkie, Senior Project Development Officer, Supplier Development Programme; Ken Hair, Purchasing Manager, Scottish Parliament; Carol Vanzetta from Carol Vanzetta Consulting Ltd; Eddie Regan, Senior PASS Consultant, BiP Solutions; Jane Gotts, Manager, BusinessClub Scotland; and Karen Davidson, Development Manager, Small Business Consortium.

Chairing the conference was GO Managing Editor Grahame Steed. He informed delegates: “There can be no doubt that we are currently in unprecedented times; but in such times there is also opportunity to offer better, more effective or innovative approaches, opportunity to break into new markets, opportunity to challenge preconceptions and myths. This conference is about seizing these opportunities, and seeing the public sector as a customer for enterprises of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds to engage with.

“The Scottish Government, and the public sector at large, wants to do business with SMEs, and as the country’s single largest customer – with an annual government spend of around £8 billion – SMEs should be very interested in doing business with it.”

Russel Griggs, Chairman of the CBI SME Council, presented statistics from the Scottish Government which showed that between 2006 and 2007 49 per cent of the spend of public contracts and 55 per cent of the volume of public contracts went to SMEs. Professor Griggs said it will be interesting to see how these figures move with the changing framework of public procurement in Scotland.

Professor Griggs also went into great depth about the recent FreshMinds Report for the CBI, Federation of Small Businesses and British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, entitled Evaluating SME experience of Government procurement across the UK.

When asked how often their organisation bid for government procurement opportunities, only 15 per cent of the respondents said ‘every/nearly every time I find an appropriate opportunity’, while 16 per cent said ‘sometimes’, 29 per cent said ‘rarely’, and 41 per cent replied ‘never’.

When asked why their business had decided not to enter a bid for a public procurement opportunity in the past two years, 55 per cent of respondents said the process of tendering for government contracts requires more time, effort and cost than their business could allow; while 51 per cent of businesses asked were not aware of any appropriate government contracts.

However, 32 per cent of respondents said they used the Supply2.gov.uk portal to identify public procurement contracts while 26 per cent used trade magazines or websites.

Barry Graham, Head of CGCoPE, said that collaboration was the key to SMEs winning more public sector contracts. He told delegates: “To make progress across the £8 billion annual Scottish public sector procurement, there needs to be effective collaboration in the private sector and across the sectors. The Centres of Expertise, supported by our policy and best practice colleagues at the Scottish Procurement Directorate, are working closely together to implement the improvement required to deliver advanced procurement.”

Eddie Regan, Senior PASS Consultant, also urged SMEs to collaborate with each other. He said: “I don’t think SMEs think enough of how they can collaborate with one another when going into competition. A lot of organisations stand alone as isolated cells, thinking they have to operate themselves, bid themselves, and work themselves. There’s absolutely nothing to stop you setting up partnerships to bid for public sector work. There’s nothing to stop you looking at sub-contracting with other contractors to go after public sector work.”