A Better World of Procurement

We're quite unusual in Adland and Brandland, because we genuinely do like the role procurement plays in agency selection and in an imperfect world, it’s about as level a playing field as you could hope for. But of course – there is always room for improvement.

Do you really care or are you box-ticking?

“Of course we really care about accessibility” one national charity said to me recently, “it’s very important to us”.

Which was interesting. Partly because they had just reappointed an agency to a series of projects in which all the previous work they had created for the charity had huge accessibility issues. Partly because when this was pointed out to them, they claimed they had reviewed the work and were satisfied it met their standards (hence the quote).

But more, because they had given accessibility and the skills in delivering it - which was supposedly incredibly important to them – 10% of the total available marks on a tender. Price had been given 35% of the marks. So price was three and a half times more important to them than accessibility. Which tells a tale. And one that made them feel more than a little uncomfortable.

Now that may or not be the wrong ratio. Some people will think that mix is fair and that price is 3.5 times more important than making sure a quarter of the population can access your messaging. Others (“waves”) will argue that maybe that mix isn’t, ahem, quite right.

But I do think tenders needs to be honest with everyone about how much these issues really matter to the folk publishing them. Often questions about accessibility, social value, sustainability, diversity and more, require agencies to submit long and detailed responses in tenders to all these areas – presumably so social value boxes get ticked, managers can feel they are doing their bit and everyone can sleep at night.

But when the marks awarded are 5% or 10% of the total, what is the point in getting agencies to devote vast amounts of time and resource to answer questions you value so much less than price, agency experience or team resource. And why say it's important but then ignore whether the product delivered meets the standards you purport to care so much about?

Which is why I applaud the approach being taken to this issue by Bristol City Council The Council has announced a new approach to social value in procurement and I’d say it’s a sensible, balanced and practical one. There are a number of elements to the policy but stand out for me is:

• Realistic: Bidders are only asked for Social Value which is realistic for that contract.

• Simpler: Bidders complete a simple template which a Procurement Officer evaluates.
  The officer managing the contract monitors supplier delivery directly.

• No fees: Suppliers no longer pay fees and evidence requirements are less onerous.

That seems to me be reasonable and responsible approach to social value. I wish more people would pursue it. They are not saying Social Value doesn’t matter – far from it. But they are making it easy for bidders to prove they meet some core standards the Council wishes to attain – a pass/fail level. And that seems fair.

If you absolutely care about issues like accessibility and diversity – and I hope you do – then by all means make agencies prove their worth. But then give those elements the value in the procurement process they deserve. If accessibility is ‘really important’ to you – give agencies with the right skills 35% of the marks available. And make price 10%.

If on the other hand your key factors are price, team, or experience and that’s where all the marks for the process lie – don’t make agencies do a lot of tender work that has no bearing on how you'll decide on the right partner.

Let’s be honest with each other about what the key decision factors really are. The evaluation criteria and submission process should reflect the factors that will truly determine your choice of partner.

When Procurement Starts Ghosting You

The tender – from a well known UK University - went out on 6th May this year, with a deadline of just 10 days later. The brief was clear, the process laid out in detail, with a start date for the winning bidder of 19th May. Turn around was therefore fast. An entire weekend was devoted to the bid by one member of staff. Other team members also stayed extra hours. To be fair, feedback on clarification questions was fast and transparent. The bid was submitted ahead of deadline – and safely received (we know because we track the downloads). We awaited news.

The 19th came. Nothing.

We left it a few days. After all the clients had given themselves very little review time - and obviously there was an urgency to the brief. Then at the end of the week – we wrote and asked for news. Nothing. No response again.

We wrote twice more asking for an update, a timeline, even an acknowledgement that the process was ongoing. Nothing. We sent two more emails from a separate email address in case our originals were falling foul of a firewall. Nothing

We wrote twice through the very friendly sounding inquiry form on the department in question 'contact us' facility – Nothing.

So some 8, nearly 9 weeks later, we've had no indication that the process is even ongoing, let alone what the scores might be for our bid.

If this was a one-off, unusual, a once in a blue moon event, that would be one thing. And to be fair it is the exception, very much not the rule. But it's by no means the only example.

In the last year we have bid for a large project for a Regional Authority. The last correspondence we received – a general note to all bidders apologising for the very late running of the tender process overall – was sent in April, confirming the review process was complete and results would be issued by May 16th. Since then nothing. Inquiries through the portal used for the campaign don't just go unanswered – we can see they remain unopened. Direct emails to the procurement department get no response.

There's a Scottish charity who were due to appoint in April, wrote to bidders to say the result would now be 'first week of June at the earliest' and since then, Nothing. There are several others.

And remember – all of this is in the last 7 months.

Delays to tenders are absolutely the norm. All agencies understand that and are more than understanding.

But ghosting? That's just plain rude.

Addendum: The excellent Mark Palmer suggested I should check out the values of that first example I gave above. I did. Top of the list is "Collaborative". Words fail me.

"We didn't really mean it".

The tender was launched in early April 2022. It was relatively complicated, involved quite a lot of clarifications, revisions, stages, and the whole process took in all 7 months – yes, 7 months – to complete, before it was confirmed we were successful. You can imagine how much work this involved. On both sides.

In the almost 3 years since, the amount of business we have been given after we 'won' the contract is zero – absolutely nothing. This is not for want of trying or asking. But as the lead client said to me in their last note, "we’ve not commissioned any agencies for a long time".

This situation is not unusual.

In the last 4 years, we have won 10 clients who since our appointment have spent not one penny with the agency nor awarded us any work. All were formal tenders, using procurement portals, took many months to complete, often the decision making process taking considerably longer than agencies were given to complete their submissions. Inquiries as to whether there will ever be any sort work forthcoming are generally meant with sorrow and apologies, though occasionally you get the one line response reminding you that 'no level of work was guaranteed or assured'. Which is true. But you know – over 3 or 4 years, having intentionally appointed an agency, you might expect something to have happened.

This sort of thing is bound to occasionally occur. But 10 times in a relatively short space of time seems a lot. And that's just the ones we won. I wonder how many of the ones we lost similarly disappeared into the void for the successful agencies?

Why does this occur? The worst of me wonders if it was just a way for overly quiet procurement or marketing departments to look busy, to be able to say they were gainfully employed in making sure the organisations had the best support available on hand. On better days, I imagine there were the best of intentions to do all manner of things, but events, changing budgets, changing strategies took over. In one case, a very honest marketing director told me "procurement made me do a tender, I told them we wouldn't have any budget for external agencies but they said we had to have a roster of approved suppliers, just in case".

And if that is the situation – please don't make us jump through hoops for months on end. Weekends get cancelled, holidays are interrupted, evening work is standard for all these submissions.

So if you're going to set the challenge – please do have a real prize at the end.