Frances Talman's blog

The target of reducing annual government borrowing has resulted in the whole of Public Sector being in a prolonged and deep spending cut. At eXceeding we regularly face Public Sector procurement teams that do not have sufficient resource available to deliver the mandated organisation transformational procurements within the target timescales.

In recent news, the collapse of the construction and outsourcing company Carillion has left many questions unanswered. Carillion was one of the UK’s biggest contractors for supplying support services to schools, hospitals, prisons and many more. Carillion collapsed during the first few weeks of January 2018, leaving 28,000 staff facing uncertain futures. But it’s not just the employees of Carillion that will be affected. Carillion customers are now having to consider their options to ensure completion of their construction projects or continuation of their support services.

Will you be running OJEU procurements in 2018 and considering securing OJEU-approved procurement consultancy support to deliver the process? If you need to manage a competitive procurement but don’t have the resources at hand to do so, you might have to run another competition first to select the consultancy to support the procurement for you! This can be a distraction and takes time and money - both of which may be scarce.

For any business, no matter what the size, there must be processes and procedures put in place to make sure that everything runs smoothly and efficiently. To do this, businesses can set up an integrated business management software system that assists with the day to day management of their company. These are known as Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP).

By far, the most frequent question that eXceeding is asked on a daily basis is how much do we charge for our services. We take time to fully understand our client’s requirements in order that we can answer this question. The cost of responding to a bid can depend dramatically on:

When you first receive tender documents for a new potential opportunity, looking at how much time you’ve got to respond to it is essential to your ‘bid/no bid’ decision! If you have a deadline which is six weeks away, then perfect. You have more than enough time to plan your submission along with:

The decision to leave Europe was made over a year ago and the waters seem as muddy as the day after the Brexit decision was taken. Can you afford to wait until all the pieces are in place? More to the point will your competitors wait until all the key decisions have been made before they start to re-position? There are actions you can take that will help you review your relationship with suppliers and stakeholders that will put you in a better position to deal with Brexit.

ISO accreditation's have become an important standard that businesses are required to achieve and practice should they wish to establish credibility with buyers. There are many ISO accreditation's that manage different aspects of business operations. The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has been put in place to ensure that company processes, services, materials and products are all fit for purpose ensuring that they are meeting the set requirements and specifications set by ISO.

When responding to tenders, having a well thought out strategy, a thorough detailed plan of action and of course, being prepared are the fundamentals required when responding to a bid. Juggling all the elements whilst keeping focused on detailed compliant response that differentiates you from competitors is a very difficult task to master.   

But it doesn’t need to be that way!

Cyber-attacks could happen at any time, anywhere, to any business. There are so many businesses that fall victim to cyber threats which results in bank details, business and client information being stolen. People often think they are protected from cyber-attacks by installing virus protection software, keeping passwords safe and implementing policies. But with the constant security changes being made, it can be difficult to keep up.