Analyse Your Business

The first step in bidding for public sector contracts (indeed all contracts) is to firstly understand your organisation and what you can offer.  Analysing your Business should be looked at in conjunction with the next main station of Understand the Market.

Quickfire Guide

Quickfire Guide

Some Things to Consider are:

  • your current contracts, including customer feedback and current performance;
  • your strengths and weaknesses;
  • current geographical coverage;
  • pricing structures;
  • unique selling point(s) of your organisation;
  • current sub-contracting undertaken, either by you or to you;
  • current collaboration e.g. consortium, joint ventures, etc.;
  • areas of development/expansion for your organisation in the future.

Analysing the above will help you to:

  • determine which parts of the public sector you are interested in;
  • ensure you only bid for work that you can do;
  • determine if you have the resources to deliver a large contract to the whole public sector;
  • decide if you are better suited to a local or niche market;
  • determine if you could you be a main contractor, or if being a sub-contractor or part of a consortium better suited for your business;
  • further determine who your current and potential future competitors are.

Benchmarking

It is a good idea to compare and evaluate yourself against the performance and pricing of other suppliers in the market, including your direct competitors. 

This will provide information on:

  • the areas you are performing well in and the areas which require improvement;
  • how organisations operate, including how they achieve their high performance.

Public Contracts Scotland Registration

You should ensure that you have registered as a supplier on Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) by setting up a supplier profile.  More information on this can be found in the Public Contracts Scotland station. 

Cyber Resilience 

Some links to resources to help you analyse your business can be found in the Support Available section.