Tendering for Public Sector Contracts: An Introduction Part 2

Is your business looking to start tendering for public sector contracts to help you grow in 2017 and beyond?

This post is the second part of a two part beginner’s guide to tendering in which we will take you through what a tender is, what the tendering process entails, where to find tenders and the benefits there are for businesses that win tenders. This guide will help you on your way to becoming a true tender expert!

In this post we explain where you can find tenders and the benefits your business would get from winning tenders. Part One can be found here.

Where to Find Tenders?

Currently all public sector organisations are legally required to publish their contract notices in order to ensure competition.  The greater the value of the contract, the more detailed the rules governing how it must be advertised.

All UK public contracts that are above a certain threshold (£111,676 for supplies and services, £4.5 million for works) must be advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) via a contract notice that follows strict rules (see Part One).

The UK’s home countries – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales – all have their own procurement portals which publish tenders. These portals publish contracts with a value threshold far lower than OJEU – for example English contracts worth over £10,000 are published.

Many public sector bodies will also publish tenders on their own websites.

Tracker is also a source of tenders – our expert research team track down both high-value contract notices and those under the OJEU thresholds to create the UK’s most comprehensive database of public sector contracts.

What are the Business Benefits of Winning Tenders?

The UK Government spent around £760 billion in 2016, a figure that will rise in 2017; this   makes them the largest purchaser in many industry sectors in the UK. Tenders are the only way into winning some of this business.

It’s not just the value of the market that makes public sector organisations attractive customers. There are many other benefits of having the Government, whether central or local, as your customer, such as:

• A public sector organisation will not go bust owing suppliers money.
• Payment terms are generally more favourable.
• Payments to suppliers need to be made within 30 days of receiving an invoice.
• SMEs have a real chance of winning business. The Government seeks to have 25% of procurement spend go to SMEs.

Therefore public sector procurement can provide both high quantity and quality business opportunities.

How Tracker can help

Tracker makes it easy for you to identify public and private sector opportunities and access meaningful market and industry news, while providing you with the vital competitor insight you need to keep your business one step ahead.

Using Tracker you can easily access opportunity documents, upload and work on winning responses, track progress and collaborate with anyone, anywhere, at any time – all at the click of a button.

Tracker is the only end-to-end business development solution with the unique intelligence you need to find, bid for and win more business.