Can SMEs win these contracts?
Of course, they can. One of the issues SMEs often face is that they are not sure where to find contract opportunities in the public sector, or that they are cautious about tendering. However, this should not prevent them from pursuing public sector opportunities for two reasons. The first being that opportunities are there and data confirms that SMEs are already working through the steps to successfully win contracts. Secondly, for those who need more guidance on navigating the tendering process, help is readily at hand.
Success for SMEs is already happening
Success for businesses has been encouraged by public procurement rules in Northern Ireland and Ireland that make frameworks more accessible by ensuring that public sector contracts are broken into lots. The smaller packages and contract sizes mean small firms can deliver and meet the qualification requirements needed. It also facilitates and encourages collaboration between companies enabling them to bid for, win and deliver larger, higher value contracts.
This can be a stepping stone to further opportunities across this island and Great Britain where the public procurement opportunity is substantial.
SMEs are dominating the numbers in terms of framework participation and winning tenders. In addition, public sector buyers do want to work with small companies, as businesses owners tend to be invested in securing positive outcomes and are often agile, innovative and very accessible.
Help is at hand
Awarding a tender can often come down to small scoring differences, it is a competitive market and any advice can make a difference. InterTradeIreland’s Go-2-Tender programme helps SMEs to improve tendering capability through practical workshops and 1:1 company specific mentoring packages. The Go-2-Tender workshops help businesses to analyse the public sector market and consider the most appropriate bids to pursue. More importantly – and with the addition of supporting mentoring packages – they support businesses to develop stronger bid content to improve the “win rate”.
How? By supporting SMEs to:
- Develop the right bid strategy. Companies should prioritise and focus on tenders that offer the best chance of success, whether in terms of sub-sector, size, geography or technical requirements. Go-2-Tender workshops can also help companies to decide when not to pursue a bid and the thought process around this.
- Gain a greater level of awareness of the public procurement market and where to find sources of intelligence in relation to upcoming pipelines. This enables firms to identify contract opportunities and prepare in advance of these appearing as live bids.
- Develop a bid library and write bid content in an engaging and clear way - improving case studies, capability and method statements.
Who can benefit?
Workshops are open to SMEs that want to improve bid performance, target new sub-sectors of the public sector market and win more public contracts as part of their overall growth strategy.
