Public Buyers

Empowering SME Suppliers for Competitive Success in Public Tenders

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Exploring EU public procurement reveals a landscape largely ready for change. It's clear that enhancing competition and ensuring fairness is not just necessary, but in fact crucial. 

Despite the bold reforms of 2014, promising streamlined processes, increased transparency, and a welcoming embrace for smaller businesses, the reality paints a different picture. There's still a marathon ahead, not a sprint.

The reforms were meant to be game-changers, but many companies today find themselves battling the same old challenges. It's time for some real discussion on how empowerment and strategic supplier support can ignite genuine transformation.

By confronting these challenges head-on, we pave the way for a procurement world that doesn't just look good on paper but delivers in the real world too, with innovation, fairness, and efficiency leading the charge.

In this article: 

  • Declining Competitive Bidding in EU procurement

  • Reform versus reality: EU procurement post-2014

  • Empowering suppliers leads to better tender outcomes

  • How Mercell enables supplier empowerment and fair competition

  • Conclusion

Declining Competitive Bidding in EU procurement

The European Union's public procurement is a crucial part of its economy, with spending around €2 trillion each year, or 14% of the EU's total GDP.

But there's a growing problem: Competition is on the decline. 

Over the last decade, we've seen the number of contracts with only a single bid nearly double, moving away from the competitive bidding that's so important. 

At the same time, cross-border procurement, where companies from one EU country win contracts in another, remains low at just 5% of all contracts. 

What this suggests is that not enough foreign suppliers are getting a chance to participate. 

In other words: These trends highlight the need for two things - a much closer look at the current landscape, plus some fresh ideas to bring back competition.

 

Reform versus reality: EU procurement post-2014

The 2014 overhaul of EU public procurement rules was truly ambitious. It targeted key improvements in areas like making processes simpler, boosting SME participation, encouraging strategic purchasing, and enhancing transparency. 

But despite these intentions, the reality hasn't really lived up to its expectations. The promise of easier access for newcomers and smaller businesses hasn't quite taken off, leaving them struggling to find a foothold in the market. 

Plus, instead of seeing a rise in SMEs winning contracts, challenges still block their path, stifling the contribution of these important players. 

So when it comes to strategic procurement, we are not fully using our purchasing power to drive forth innovation and address key societal issues. Which means that public contracts are not delivering as much value or innovation as they potentially could.

And on top of that, our efforts to create a more open and trustworthy system are held back by ongoing problems with transparency and integrity.

So, it’s clear: We need to dig deeper to understand why there's not enough competition. EU public procurement needs to work better for all stakeholders involved: By being more efficient, clear, and not to mention fair.

 

Empowering suppliers leads to better tender outcomes 

Equipping suppliers with critical knowledge, practical tools, and market insights transforms them into active competitors in public tenders, significantly enhancing both the quality and diversity of submissions.

Let's break down how this makes a difference:

1. Lowering the threshold and breaking down barriers

Comprehensive education on tender processes, legal requirements, and digital submissions lowers barriers to entry. This inclusive approach attracts a broader spectrum of suppliers, fostering a competitive market that drives down costs and improves service quality for public buyers.

Addressing common challenges like complex documentation and language barriers through targeted training levels the playing field, making procurement processes more inclusive and competitive.

Platforms like Mercell are pivotal in this transformation, offering specialised courses on procurement strategies and regulatory compliance. These expert-led resources broaden the supplier base and deliver tangible benefits, including cost savings and superior procurement outcomes for buyers.

2. Boosting transparency

Transparency in public procurement is transformative. Access to current market data, including prior bids and contract expiration dates, provides several key benefits:

  • Informed bidding: Suppliers can analyse past winning bids, aligning their proposals with buyer expectations and needs.

  • Enhanced trust: Open and fair tender processes build trust, encouraging more suppliers to participate.

  • Opportunity identification: Tracking contract expirations helps suppliers prepare for upcoming tenders, ensuring readiness and strategic planning.

  • Performance benchmarking: Historical data allows suppliers to benchmark against competitors, identifying areas for improvement and enhancing bid quality.

3. Improving bid quality

When suppliers have detailed insights, advanced tools, and practical resources, they can tailor bids precisely to buyer requirements.

This approach ensures bids align with the buyer's strategic goals, not just technical specifications. Understanding the buyer’s vision helps suppliers create standout proposals, raising the overall standard of submissions.

Despite this, many suppliers, especially smaller ones, hesitate to participate due to the complexity of the bidding process. This is common for newcomers with limited public procurement experience.

By providing clear guidance on tender documents, evaluation criteria, and digital submissions, we simplify the process. This support encourages more suppliers to participate, which creates a competitive and higher-quality bidding environment.

4. Ensuring compliance

A well-informed supplier base is a compliant one. By fully understanding the legal and regulatory landscape, suppliers ensure their bids meet all requirements. That’s why supporting suppliers with the right compliance resources and support is key.

To help suppliers grasp compliance better, we offer comprehensive training programs, expert consultations, and easy-to-access online resources. By maintaining compliance, it ensures that all participants are evaluated on an even footing, creating a robust and equitable competitive process.

 

How Mercell enables supplier empowerment and fair competition 

At Mercell, our mission is to simplify and ensure compliance in tenders, while promoting equal opportunities for all public sector suppliers. Our main goal has led us to streamline the public bidding process, creating a seamless, efficient, and rewarding experience. We focus on supporting supplier growth and professionalising the market.

We have transformed public bidding by integrating discovery, assessment, and bidding into a single place. This integration not only simplifies daily operations for suppliers but also provides them with valuable market insights and comprehensive training on bidding strategies.

 

Strategic insights based on publicly available information

We provide powerful tools using publicly available information, such as tender documents and buyer-submitted fields. We bundle this data into digestible formats, helping suppliers understand their potential customers, tender market, contract expiration dates and historical procurement. Our knowledge hub trains suppliers in optimising their bid submissions. This information is not tailored to specific tenders, but enhances the overall market understanding of suppliers.   

 

This benefits both small and larger suppliers and buyers. Small or local suppliers, typically limited by time and resources, greatly benefit from our efficient bidding process. This gives them the time needed to focus more on creating exceptional bids without getting overwhelmed. For larger suppliers, even with dedicated teams, our system improves their bidding processes, allowing them to work more proactively and enhance communication.

With the practical and intuitive tools available, we also provide comprehensive market insights and training. This includes access to Mercell Academy & Support, offering ready-made resources that deepen suppliers’ understanding of the public sector and teach strategies to professionalise all their tendering efforts.

Not only does this improve bid quality in general, but it also boosts suppliers’ confidence and skills, which in turn benefits buyers through higher quality and more competitive bids.

 

Conclusion

Empowering suppliers and offering them strategic support is essential for improving EU public procurement. 

Even after the big changes in 2014, we're still seeing less competition and small businesses struggling. 

By tackling these challenges directly, we can set the stage for a procurement process that is not only more efficient overall, but also more transparent and equitable. 

Here’s the thing: True empowerment of suppliers is a team effort, and it requires better collaboration between government bodies, procurement experts, and the suppliers themselves. If there’s valuable effort put in, we can significantly improve outcomes in public procurement, benefiting everyone involved through this joint support. Boosting suppliers' skills helps them deal with today's challenges and sets them up for future success and innovation.

Mercell steps in as a partner committed to providing you with the tools for a streamlined procurement process. If you are interested to see how Mercell can assist you in all aspects of your sourcing and tendering process, book a demo here. 

Mercell also equips suppliers with the knowledge and support they need to confidently write the best bids possible. You can try Mercell’s monitoring service for free, for 14 days with no strings attached.