procurement – Page 2

PME4U Blogs

Weightings or no weightings, that is the question

Establishing a detailed and concise set of response criteria not only facilitates the extraction of key information in vendors responses, helping to align their solution with the actual requirements, it also allows easier evaluation and scoring of those responses, but not all criteria has equal importance. This is where applying a method of weighting the criteria provides the ability to define which criterion will have the greatest benefit to delivering the requirement and is therefore more important. But the question is, should the weighting be published as part of the invitation for offer, or should it be for internal information only?

Establish and Maintain Competitive Tension in Procurement Processes

Establishing and maintaining competitive tension in your procurement processes is the easiest and most effective method of driving value for money outcomes. So what is competitive tension? The most elegant description I have seen is that a proponent perceives a creditable threat to their ability to win the bid. The three key words are “perceives” and “credible threat”.

Taking the long way round, but don’t walk it

Let me state emphatically off the bat that this “Procurement Made Easy for You” website is not targeted at shortcuts or workarounds, few things will kill process efficiency and effectiveness quicker than taking the easy way out. There is nothing clever or admirable in delivering an outcome by skipping over all the foundations, keystones and frameworks that ensure the outcome is built to last.

It’s the Principle that Counts – Principle Based Procurement Policy

Historically in large organisations and the public sector, procurement has been strongly structured with frameworks of policies, procedures, work instructions and templates. While this has without a doubt increased the compliance and consistency of procurement functions, has it hit the limits of its usefulness? Is it time to review this paradigm and consider alternatives that may free up the creative thinking and tailored approaches to the unique challenges each procurement requirement presents?