I was working through a tender last week from a public body with the usual stack of documents. The insurance section asked for employer’s liability at £10m, public liability at £5m and professional indemnity at £1m. Pass/fail. We don’t have employer’s liability insurance because we don’t employ anyone. Llarn is two directors and a pool… Read More Ask the question
Public sector buyers are starting to ask a different question in tenders. Not just what will you deliver, but how was this bid produced? Specifically, was AI used, how was it used, and what checks were applied? That brings the process behind the submission into scope. The issue is not whether suppliers use AI –… Read More You and AI
I published a post on personalisation this week, and the same day, I received a pre-market questionnaire for a procurement process. I found myself writing the same thing in a different register. Procuring a platform is not the same as building capability. Sharon Green made the point well in the comments: the skill of navigating… Read More Buying badly
I wrote in February about how I’d got angry about a tender opportunity which shifted, morphed and became something more than the sum of its parts. After some long consideration, we didn’t bid for the work – there were just too many red flags which didn’t ‘feel’ right. It was possible the process had simply… Read More I’m not angry, I’m disappointed
I know completing procurement processes is time consuming, complicated, wearing and bureaucratic. What is does do, however, is make you think about what you do and force you to describe in a way that people who don’t know what you do understand.