I frequently read Proposals from existing and potential suppliers as their response to Requests for Proposals or Prices – RFP from my client companies.

These RFP are deliberately drafted to be as straightforward and uncomplicated as possible. So, they should represent a simple golden opportunity for suppliers to present their company and its products or services in the best possible light to an interested audience.

This is an invitation to sell, which should be any company’s dream. Many respond to the invitation very well, and present a compelling business case for their offering. There are more who respond in a way which makes their sales message difficult to understand, and a struggle to decipher. So what are the top ten most common mistakes that suppliers make when responding to an invitation to prepare a proposal? I’ve listed here the ones I see most often.

 1. Not reading the invitation or brief

This one is so obvious; but it’s still a constant surprise when I see proposals which clearly show the author has not read the brief fully. I even know of one supplier who told me they had submitted a very low price without even opening the invitation.

2. Not answering specific questions in the brief.

If the brief contains particular questions, such as: “What is your annual widget manufacturing capacity?” the answer is clearly something we’d be like to know. So, without answers to those sorts of questions, it’s hard to assess what the supplier is offering. It also suggests the supplier is not interested in the customer’s needs.

3. Wordiness

Before contacting a group of particular suppliers, we will have done our research. We’ll already know a fair amount about the supplier company, so that’s why we usually say that any standard presentations may be of interest, but are unlikely to be specific enough to answer what we’d like to know. Despite that, some suppliers still insist on providing twenty pages of standard corporate PowerPoint containing information we already knew.

4. Tradition

This can be a challenging one for some to overcome. It’s the “We’ve always done it this way” approach to proposals and presentations. That may be a good approach in some circumstances, but these circumstances are ones of change, so it’s important to be flexible and think of new ways of presenting as well as new ways of engaging customers in business. If there are ten proposals to choose from, you need to stand out, so try a break with tradition.

5. Leaving it to the night before

I’ve found that business people tend to fall into two groups: those who use a to-do list, prioritise their tasks, and allow the right amount of time for important tasks (such as selling to a potential new customer); and those who leave everything to the last possible minute. The latter group usually lose more proposals than they win.

6. Leaving the last client’s name or logo on the proposal

We all have templates or formats we’ve used in the past, and it makes sense to re-use something which has time and effort invested in it. But when I see proposals which still contain logos or references to the last customer the template was used for, it simply says that the supplier has not taken enough time and care over the proposal.

7. Thinking about the proposal from your own perspective only

Most proposals I see concentrate heavily on the view of the author and their company. They begin with long explanations of what they do, how they organise their business, and what process they will apply in providing their xyz service to us. That’s important and relevant, but not as important as how the customer views the world, and what they think they should receive. It’s much better to read a proposal which begins with a well-researched and presented summary of the customer and their needs. Which brings me on to….

8. Not thinking about the customer

If you’re writing a proposal for a C-Level (Chief-anything) Executive at a potential new customer, the Chief has presented to you a business opportunity and a courtesy. The RFP will contain a description of the customer’s business and their needs. But that should simply be a starter for you to write your own research-based summary of the customer’s industry, business, needs, and fit with what you offer. Beginning your proposal by simply writing about what your company does is unlikely to be as persuasive as demonstrating your understanding of someone else’s business.

9. Forgetting the basics

There are some things which seem so obvious, we can often take them for granted, and expect them as a given in any potentially valuable proposal or sales presentation. These are the simple aspects which everyone writing proposals should get right, but it’s very surprising how many don’t. I group them into two straightforward categories: form and content.  The content describes what you’re offering, and needs to be clear, simple and short, but with references to separate detail if needed. The form is how your proposal is written and presented, and must have correct grammar, spelling and punctuation, and be set out in a presentation style which is easy to follow. The simple courtesy of thanking the Chief for the opportunity is also something to be encouraged.

10. Not going the innovative mile

In any RFP there will be some standard requirements, questions, and formats. The document will include all of the usual needs for the product or service the customer would like to buy. But, we also always encourage suppliers to suggest new ideas or approaches to a product, a service, or account management which we may not have thought of. Demonstrating that a supplier has spent time and effort thinking about how they can help improve a customer’s business is always a great way to stand out.

I’m fortunate to live in a city, but also have a four mile stretch of protected woodland and open country in a greenbelt beginning at the bottom of my garden. This provides me with an ideal and free alternative to the exercise once provided by an expensive gym subscription. It also provides a fascinating opportunity to observe the different ways in which people interact with strangers, or those with whom they have a nodding acquaintance, by virtue of meeting them at the same point at the same time in a coincidence of separate daily exercise routines. There are many types of reaction: the cheerful nod, the breathless wave, the blank stare, or a fascination with the ground.

This spectrum of reactions reminds me of the many ways in which apparently similar businesses can display widely differing styles and characteristics, and how many have a collective culture which can endure for years, despite the apparent diversity of the people and characters who work in them.  Having an authentic and consistent company style or character is important for a business, because if handled well, it provides customers, employees and others with a reassuring confidence in the predictability, reliability and dependability of a business. This style must be authentic, consistent and relevant to a business and its markets over a long time period – jarring styles or sudden changes of approach will unsettle those with an interest in the business. Having the easy-going consistent friendliness of a Starbucks suddenly transforming into a formal, rigid business would be a shock to the customers, and to the bottom line.

But what if the approach to dealing with people is not right for the market a company operates in? Well in the long-term, the business will lose customers, employees, money, and probably its existence. So how is this tone, the ease with which a business deals with its customers, set, and maintained? I think it’s very simple. It’s not established by any imposed changes which are not authentic, relevant or based on business common-sense. It’s about the style and tone the elders or leaders of the business set, which they learned from their elders when they were starting in their own business careers. The way a leader deals with those working in a business, and those supplying , buying from or visiting it is behaviour which will be acquired and repeated by others – particularly those in the early stages of their careers.  So, if the leader treats his senior team well, motivates and guides them, you’ll usually find that behaviour permeates the entire business, and at the moment of truth – the contact with the customer, the customer will be treated well, and is much more likely to be a loyal returning customer. But, the converse is also true. A dysfunctional business with hostile environments, in which the leader is detached from what is actually happening in the moments of truth, or leads by table-thumping, is much more likely to display collective disinterest, inattentiveness or even hostility towards its customers and employees. As with most successes or failures in business, the root cause is at the top – the way the leader handles people.

Since mid-2010 it’s looked quite likely that Apple’s quarterly profit could exceed that of Microsoft for the first time in twenty years, and this month it did. Commentators rushed to announce the writing was on the wall for Microsoft, and that it had no chance of ever recovering the lead it had lost to the more interesting, exciting and glamorous Apple.

It’s true that Apple is an exciting business, but Apple manufactures computers and consumer devices, which are very well designed, have great functionality, and many millions of enthusiastic users. In contrast, Microsoft’s software powers 92% of all computers and the products of its Server and Office divisions dominate the use of IT in business, accounting for 80% of Microsoft’s profit. So, the two companies operate in and excel in completely different markets and a comparison of their products and profitability is not a very meaningful one. The debate about consumer interest, excitement and PR style is an entirely different theme.

With the current generation of Server and Office products, Microsoft has developed some great software, and in planning for its future growth strategy, it has laid some outstanding technical foundations with its Azure platform, designed to take the Server products into the realm of cloud computing, in the same way that Office365 will take its Office products into the cloud. Realising the business potential of these changes for Microsoft it still some way off, but the foundations for next generation growth of business products are there.

Much of the debate about Microsoft has really been about the perceptions of growth prospects and leadership. Steve Ballmer has received a lot of criticism since the departure of Bill Gates, but that’s hardly surprising: who would have been able to follow Bill Gates and not be criticised by comparison? Any business needs to be in a state of constant change and growth in order to survive, and not having clarity and focus about that growth and change is what has unsettled Microsoft investors.

Microsoft’s great success has been in the business market, not the consumer market. Over the past few years, Microsoft has developed several products intended for use by consumers. With the exception of Xbox, most of them failed. But even Xbox represents only a tiny proportion of 4% of Microsoft profits. Skype, and the opportunity for Windows Phone 7 to grow through the Nokia alliance, are clearly opportunities for consumer products. Skype will sit alongside Microsoft’s existing messaging products, and may have a future as part of Windows 8. But it’s not yet a mainstream business tool, and to spend 8 billion dollars on a product outside your core business seems odd. If it was a defensive move, to keep the technology out of the hands of competitors, the price tag is even crazier.

Let’s hope Microsoft continues to stick to the business, back-office, unexciting but profitable focus it is so good at, and stops dabbling in the more exciting consumer products arena it is not so good at.

I’ve found through experience of leading businesses and cost reduction projects that lowering costs without weakening your business can lead to dramatic improvements in short term results, and in long term prospects.

But, a project to reduce costs will not necessarily lead to long term profitability if it is not properly designed for your business. So, what are the key ingredients for project success:  how can you reduce costs without sacrificing the strengths your business already has? The answer is in basic economics and business reality: competition, management and skill, together with some software tools.

Business costs arise in three main areas: people, processes and procurement.  Reducing the number of people (let’s always remember, they are people, not a headcount) in your business is one way to reduce costs, but is too often viewed as the first option. Business strengths could be preserved by looking at other areas first, possibly re-designing processes, and then considering whether all of the jobs you offer can be better used in those processes.

That leaves procurement, and the difference between procurement cost cutting which could weaken a business and one which strengthens it depends on the overall approach, character and style of the project, and how it is designed and managed.

The nature and feel of cost reduction projects tend to fall into two main areas. Firstly, the slash-and-burn approach, a project with a single, narrow remit in which all areas are subject to a relentless questioning, and need for justification. Secondly, there are those projects with a clear objective, and a rigorous proven method, a business-wide CEO’s perspective, and some specialised tools and experience.

So what’s wrong with the first approach, which can reduce costs quickly? Fear, demoralisation, instability and supply chain weakening are some of the main disadvantages. Obviously, those are pretty fundamental, so most of the advantages of this approach really pale into insignificance.

What about the second approach to rapid cost reduction? This whole-business approach takes a balanced view, focussing on the need to develop the business in the long term by setting the right cost and supply base in the short term. This approach is one which emphasises fair competition, transparent collaboration and negotiation, not table-thumping. It’s also one which seeks out the strengths of suppliers and tries to play to them, whatever their size or niche.

Getting the best out of existing or available suppliers is all about a question of balance – their costs have to be competitive, but that does not always mean the lowest. In my company’s methodology, cost is only one of a range of measures in a balanced scorecard designed to identify suppliers with the best overall set of attributes. Cost is of great importance, but the cheapest supplier will not always be the best one if low cost is at the expense of poor quality or unreliable service. The best suppliers are those who pay attention to all aspects of their competitive offering – and play to their own strengths.



The early stage founder with the big new idea is often obsessed with secrecy, patent protection, confidentially clauses and other signs of a belief that their idea has huge commercial potential, which is almost within reach. But how valuable is the big idea?

It’s true that we need a constant flow of new inventions and ideas to keep our societies and economies vibrant, and to have economic value, inventions need to be well-implemented. But, the ability to implement and manage the day to day operations of a trading business is not always the strongest skill of an invention-led founder.

Even with a rounded founder, or one with the common sense to complement their own skill set with a team which provides what’s necessary to innovate rather than invent, the gap between the idea and a sustainable business can be too great for anyone to fund, or work with.

There’s been a great deal of emphasis in business in recent years on the importance of invention, the next big thing, or the big new idea. But, none of these are as important as the skill of innovation – taking existing ideas, or ideas which may be very old and implementing them, or operating them every day in a way which is cheaper, better, faster or easier than anyone else.

The importance of innovation to profitability is much greater than the importance of new ideas in themselves. But there’s an added edge to innovation – it has to be a constant process, continually seeking to innovate and improve without any fixed goal such as the filing of a patent. Constant innovation is what sets apart prosperous, expanding businesses from those which are static or declining, and led by tradition.

There are some very successful and high profile examples of businesses which started not with a brilliant flash of inspiration about a big new idea, but rather as improved, innovative implementations of existing ideas or long-established industry models. They include Microsoft, Ford and Apple. If you thought Apple invented the iPod, they didn’t. They innovated an existing patent which an English inventor called Kane Kramer could not afford the patent renewal fee for.

So, if you’re searching for the next big thing to make the cornerstone of your new business, don’t search too hard. You’d probably be better off by studying what existing businesses in your chosen sector get wrong, avoiding their mistakes, and implementing a proven idea in a way which is simply better.



If you decide to start your own business with one to five people, you’re starting on a path which could lead you to a successful SME, or more. But, at the beginning of that journey, however many people you have with you, you’re going to need all the help you can get.

The type of help you need depends on the business you have, but for many will include the usual setting up: VAT, PAYE, Companies House, Patent Office, HR Law, Accounting, Tax, Business planning – the stuff of Business Link. Most of which are unavoidable, but none of which actually help you to do what you’re planning to be good at – the day to day operation of your business.

But what about the free or low-cost tools which can save you time, or start your marketing, organise your projects, or help in the hundreds of other small ways you need when your resources are limited? There’s no single one-size-fits-all list, because each industry and business has different needs, but I’ve found the items on my list of favourites to be very useful over the years in my small services and software business. One frequent theme for the items on this list is that many offer their value as cloud software or online services, completely by-passing the inflexibility and fixed cost which characterised so many business services only a couple of years ago.

Marketing

There are a lot of sales and marketing companies ready to part you from your cash, but until you’re ready for a bigger plan, you may find some of the editable templates available from LogoKing.com , PresentationPro.com, iStockPhoto.com and HP.com or best of all, StockLayouts.com better suited to your budget.

http://www.stocklayouts.com

Networking

For online business networking, this one doesn’t really need much explanation – use LinkedIn. Xing also provides a business networking service, but it has a different, more local feel.

http://www.linkedin.com/

People

The UK’s draconian and burdensome employment laws make employing people in a small business a risk which many prefer to avoid. One alternative way to build a team of self-motivated people for a project or longer term venture is to use the freelancers available through PeoplePerhour.com. This service also works both ways: you can use it to sell your own services.

http://www.peopleperhour.com

Web site

With so many low cost, highly designed templates available, there’s no excuse for not having a good-looking, functional web site to showcase your business. But, there are also so many bad templates on the web, you may need to search hard, especially if you want something with a European design feel. But the templates at themeforest.net or elated.com have a good choice, with simple instructions for editing to match your own business style.

http://themeforest.net

Web site hosting, email service

There are lots of big hosting companies around, with pushy advertising and great-looking offers to sign up. But, I’ve found through experience that the moment of truth with many of these companies comes when you need to ask them a question – their support is either non-existent or completely ineffective. For some time, I’ve preferred to use a smaller UK-based company, LiquidSix, who have good packages and prices to host my many domains. I also get quick simple email services and the best hosting support I know of, with real people I can talk to if I need to.

http://www.liquidsix.com

Blogging

If blogging is an appropriate way for you to promote your business, you may like to use the service which hosts this blog – Squarespace.com. They have a limited but easy to use range of templates, and a great editing system, plus an iPhone App.

http://www.squarespace.com

Documents

The legal and other documents you need to start your business are pretty close to commodities, so for the smallest business, there’s no reason to incur high legal firm costs. I’ve adapted the documents at SimplyDocs to suit most of the circumstances I need. But if in doubt, get professional legal help.

http://www.simply-docs.co.uk/

Bookkeeping

I used Sage for many years until their policy of removing support for older products made me think I should try a different supplier (smart move, Sage – encouraging customers to leave). So, I now use ClearBooks, a London-based low-cost online service which you don’t need an accounting qualification to understand.

http://www.clearbooks.co.uk/

Project management

I’m a recent convert to Basecamp, which is an online project management service for you and your clients to share plans, files, messages, task lists, and more. The full version is fairly expensive, but they also offer a free and a basic low-cost plan for smaller businesses.

http://basecamphq.com/

Support

SmarterTrack is one of those helpful, supportive businesses who provide free, full versions of their product for small growing businesses. I use it as a cloud-based support system for clients, who can also access it from their iPhones.

http://www.smartertools.com

Last week I wrote about how a focus on the basics can help some companies stand out by providing great customer service. The way you provide that service will make or break your business in the long term, but it’s not the only essential part of how you affect your customers and whether they stay with you.

The part which is more fundamentally important than customer service is something which has become a bit unfashionable in recent years – operations, or the actual day to day running of your core activity.

Since the 1980s, businesses have broadened the number of disciplines in the typical organisation structure. The rise of accountants was followed by an increased emphasis on marketing, a more central role for IT, and more recently a higher profile for HR. All of these specialisms have important parts to play in a business, and without them, many businesses would simply fail to compete, before probably failing as a business.

The skilled professionals working in these specialist departments all provide vital support services – but that’s the point, they are support services. Essential, often high-profile, usually high quality in the best companies, but they are mostly one step removed from the essential contact point with the lifeblood of a business – the customers. That contact point is shared by the front-line functions:  customer service, sales and operations.

Look at the composition of the average board in a typical SME, and you’ll notice there’s broad representation from all of the major functions, which is as it should be. But in many board discussions I’ve heard, the conversation is mostly weighted towards finance, sales and HR risks – often in that order – with any discussion of what a business actually does being relegated to a specialist section of detailed capacity scores, throughput measures, utilisation percentages, and similar grinding statistics. No wonder the operations functions have become a bit unloved in recent years. But unless the operations function excels at what it does, the business will eventually fail. To excel, they need all of the support functions to be obsessively focussed on the objectives of operations, customer service and sales, and not necessarily on their own objectives.

But, even with great support, smart use of technology, and first class impressions for customers, if the operations function is not performing, customers will still leave in droves. As I discovered, when I left as a customer of one business recently. My car needed a service. I didn’t know that, but the car dealership did, from their smart IT system. So, their system sent me a text message to remind me, telling me they had made a booking, and someone would telephone me to confirm it was convenient. They duly called, ten minutes later. Impressive. The experience at the servicing reception continued the high quality theme; the staff knew my name already, offered real coffee, and a comfortable and glossy waiting area. All very good customer service so far. My car would be ready later that day, the efficient administrator told me, and I could call to collect it at 5:00 p.m. But, at 4:45 p.m., the Operations Manager passed a message to the Customer Service people, asking them to call me to tell me they had not even started to look at my car, and I could not have it back. The worst part of this is it had happened in exactly the same way, six months earlier, which I mentioned when the dealership’s feedback co-ordinator called me then. Wow. How to lose a customer in one easy step. Even with great customer service, good IT systems, and well-trained staff, this was one business which was simply not good at what it was supposed to be in business for.



A mistake often made by manufacturing or industrial SMEs is to assume that customer service is more important for service industries than for their own. Not so. In a flattening business world, where cost competitiveness has a global span, companies of all sizes need to look for ways to stand out. One way of doing that and building up some long-term customer loyalty is to deliver great customer service.

There are some businesses who decide to outsource their customer service, to a company far removed from the needs and circumstances of the businesses or consumers who are their customers. In my view, that is a mistake, because it takes a central part of a business – being in contact with its customers – and gives it to a third party. Why would you be so averse to allowing your own employees, with detailed knowledge of your own products or services to talk to the customers who provide your income?

Other businesses, particularly those at the smaller end of the SME scale make different mistakes. These businesses often recognise the central importance of customer service to their competitiveness, and diligently research and implement a range of technologies to help their limited resources reach further. So, they invest in expensive CRM systems, automated switchboards, virtual answering services, automated customer survey forms and “tell us how we’re doing” feedback emails.

The most fundamental point shared by these two contrasting approaches - the “We want someone else to care” and the “We care a great deal”  - is that they both lack authenticity. In the case of outsourcing one of the most important things in your business, there’s no authenticity because someone else is doing it for you.  In the case of technological overloading of customer service, the authenticity is absent because it’s a formulaic, impersonal approach. How many times have you completed an automated customer survey form and ever received a real “Thanks for your time”, let alone seen something actually change?

For the SMEs who don’t outsource, but try to deliver good customer service, this lack of authenticity can arise because they’re actually trying too hard. They focus on the process rather than the outcome, feeling that the visibility of the tools of customer service is a substitute for it. Often, they could deliver much better customer service by simply concentrating on the basics. A meeting, telephone call or an email dealt with by a person, who is: Informed, Diligent, Engaged and Authentic – my IDEA of customer service – will produce much better results than complex processes.

Being informed in customer service means giving whoever is providing it a good information system, with timely, relevant data about the customer. Diligent means they need to do what they say they will, without reminders. Engaged means demonstrating a full understanding of what the customer wants in this transaction, and exactly what you will do to provide it. Authenticity means understanding your company’s products or services inside out, understanding your customer’s needs, and why they buy from you.

Customer service is actually very straightforward. Delivering great customer service is not difficult; it simply takes a focus on the basics, hard work, and authenticity.



For the second time in as many weeks, The UK Government has announced plans to help 99% of UK companies – the SME’s which represent most of the economic activity in the country. Last week, we heard from Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, of some changes to procurement rules intended to benefit SMEs. Today, we expect to hear from Vince Cable, Business Secretary that he is re-establishing the Export Credit Guarantee Scheme for small businesses, abandoned twenty years ago. The re-introduction of this scheme should be a welcome boost to the thousands of SMEs who would like to export their products, but cannot take the risk that volatile businesses or economies in other countries could result in them not getting paid. Also today, news of a new Business Growth Fund for SMEs is announced, which describes itself as a “modern day 3i” – an institution which effectively abandoned the SME market several years ago, leaving a vacuum which has yet to be adequately filled.

So why is the Government suddenly championing the central role of SMEs in generating and sustaining growth, after years of ignoring them? It’s certainly not vote-fishing; we’re too far away from any election. It doesn’t seem to be driven by political ideology, as Mr Cable himself asserts in today’s FT. Perhaps, just perhaps, this government actually realises that the tens of thousands of small and medium sized businesses with low profiles, and few loud voices are what they are: the central part of economic growth and prosperity.

So is this all the Government can do? Certainly not – there are many other ways in which the Government can set the most favourable environments for businesses to improve and find new opportunities. But in a free-market economy there are limits to what any government can and should be involved in. As Vince Cable says in his own article: “Governments will not produce the next Google or Microsoft but can help promote the foundation technology”.  He’s absolutely correct; Government should set the environment and infrastructure to allow SMEs to do what they do best, and not attempt to micro-manage them through taxation and regulation.

So what more could the Government do to help? Reversing the tide of pointless and irrelevant rules and bureaucracy which have stifled and disadvantaged businesses would be a good place to start. A recent survey by the Institute Of Directors found that the average Director has to spend at least 17 hours a month working on nothing other than paperwork associated with Government regulation. The position has become so particularly burdensome in HR areas that many of the smallest businesses now avoid taking on employees, because the paperwork and laws which govern every aspect of what should be a simple transaction present far too much of a risk. That’s why freelancing and virtual project teams, in which each person works for themselves but collaborates when projects arise, have become so popular. It’s why businesses such as PeoplePerHour.com have prospered so much in recent years. So there’s some good to come out of red tape after all – a business which makes its profitable living out of people who don’t want to have to deal with the Government burden any more. However, I’m sure Vince Cable could deliver benefit to many more businesses with a simple cutting of the red tape. Then we could all spend that extra 17 hours a month working out how to become the next Government-promoted Google!



I had a telephone call this week – the fifth very similar one in as many weeks – from Rajiv, who said his company had been asked by the Government to identify SME services and products which could improve efficiency and save costs. My company’s services and software do both of those things, so I was interested in what he wanted to tell me.

My initial scepticism that this was a call which would eventually end in me being offered a very competitive “sign-up fee” was allayed by Rajiv’s polite explanation of his objectives and his understanding of my services. I explained that my software and success-only fee were provided only to private sector companies, particularly SMEs. Why not to the public sector, asked Rajiv? Because having spent many years in CEO, MD and other roles, I’ve found through costly first-hand experience that public sector procurement and purchasing processes are one of the most debilitating and wasteful exercises a small business can subject itself to.

I thought Rajiv’s next response would be one of shock and surprise. Instead, he agreed. That is the way UK Government procurement works, he said. He was working on the first stages of a project to help inject a private-sector mind-set into public sector operations. I’m afraid, I said, that will never work. People who choose to work in the public sector do so because they have the appropriate mind-set and approach. That’s why they don’t work in the private sector. Square pegs, round holes. In both directions.

It seems Rajiv may have known something was about to change. Yesterday Francis Maude, the UK Minister for the Cabinet Office, announced he was streamlining procurement rules to make it easier for SMEs to win Government business. In Mr Maude’s own words: ”In the UK the average time for procurement is 77 weeks. In Germany, an EU country subject to the same rules, they do it in 40 weeks. The result of that is smaller suppliers get squeezed out because it’s costly, burdensome and they lose the will to live.” You’re absolutely right, Mr Maude. It’s worse than frustrating; it can incur huge cost, and distract managers from much more profitable activity.

So, does this announcement herald the beginning of a bold new period in reduced government red-tape? I fear not. We’ve heard it all before, and nothing changed. Sir Philip Green’s review of government procurement and efficiency is 2010 has been completely ignored by Government. More tellingly, Mr Maude has tried this before, twenty years ago when he was a Treasury Minister. Still nothing changed.

So surely there must be someone who benefits from the public spending which Government departments have at their disposal. Yes, large companies who are themselves often indistinguishable from public sector organisations, armed with teams of dedicated procurement experts who do nothing except complete tender documentation. The sorts of companies who win large defence contracts, major civil engineering works, or significant health service supply contracts. In fact, the sort of companies who are providing non-executives for Mr Maude’s initiatives: GlaxoSmithKline, Kingfisher and Centrica. It’s certain that those non-executives will of course, always act with complete propriety in their roles, and their own companies will always decline any tendering where there is a conflict of interest. That’s what we’d expect. But those non-executives do still work in very large organisations, which look a lot like the public sector. So where are the SME representatives? Where is the direct feedback and perspective from the businesses Mr Maude says he is trying to help in this procurement improvement?

If you’d like to improve procurement and reduce costs in your own SME business, with no fee if you don’t gain, then contact me at www.quartile.co.uk