Be Connected Data Analysis – What about Suppliers?

A great public sector procurement deal has several successful components. All should be present to qualify it as a “good deal”. Here are 4 that spring to mind:

Lower cost, ideally through collaborative procurement for greater buying power
Demonstrable savings over the previous contract
Better terms, such as tighter SLAs or equipment refresh
Acceptable service from a reliable and credible supplier

Here’s how Be Connected gives a significant boost to the work of procurement officers.

How Be Connected helps procurement officers to get the data they need

This is where Be Connected excels.

Let’s take a look at BT Global and the category of Mobile Minutes.

Contracts falling due for renewal

This can be your starting point when seeking potential collaboration partners. The Advanced Search feature offers very powerful filters to narrow your search but this is a quick snapshot.

Graphics give a quick picture of vertical and regional usage

Visuals are very useful to get a fast and approximate picture of a supplier’s coverage across government verticals and geographic regions:

Switching suppliers? Be Connected points the way.

Comin up to contract expiry and renewal is often when procurement officers actively look at the market to identify potential alternative suppliers who may be also be active in the relevant framework. Knowing what organisation currently engage their services provides an avuenue for exploring user opinion.

That requires knowing both what organisation use the supplier and whom to contact in these organisations. Be Connected has the answers.

Say we are looking at supplies of Mobile Minutes. The advanced search screen allows us to search for active contracts from all suppliers currently servicing this category in the public sector.

We also select the approximate spend size that our organisation is considering so that we see peer organisations rather than those who are far too big or too small compared with us.

The results will display a list of qualifying contracts. Inside each one are details of the contract owner – the person to contact to obtain an opinion about that supplier.

Be Connected holds case studies by suppliers

They can be very useful in quickly grasping the benefits of a proposed product, system or service.

How do you know the supplier will be “a good supplier”?

It’s only by asking other users and procurement officers, or reading their opinions and feedback. Be Connected gives you a call list in seconds.

Supplier Relationship Management

The procurement officer wants to know that the users of the products or services procured will be supported by a dependable supplier. At a high level, the supplier must demonstrate the following characteristics at least:

Available and contactable immediately for support queries or issues
Resolve any issues within the agreed SLA interval in a professional and satisfactory manner
Capability and ethos to enter a trusted partnership arrangement which encourages supplier innovation, reduces risks, increases quality and reliability and controls costs

The bottom line

Be Connected provides the majority of information using fresh and accurate data. You can then leverage this information to take your investigation of a supplier to the next stage.