Brit prosecutors ask IT suppliers to fight over £3 USB cable tender Small businesses have often moaned that government procurement is just one massive pork barrel, with only the greediest and biggest able to stick their snouts in. But some departments are doing their best to carve up tenders into smaller, more manageable chunks. Step forward the UK's Crown Prosecution Service, which threw a …
You miss the point.
The bureaucracy droid has to generate the tender, audit the tender documents when returned and issue the final tender. He could have ordered the part from Amazon or Joe Bloggs Computer sales down the road but that's not his job.
When no tender documents are returned due to it being a "bloody stupid thing to tender for", the bureaucracy droid asks their preferred Megacorp to bid and supply an approved part which they do at a single price of £25. A follow up order can then follow for 30000 of the items at a generously discounted rate of only £15 per item. It's a win-win for bureaucracy jobs, Megacorp profits and of course us, the great unwashed people, as they've got such a good deal by bulk purchasing ...
I worked for one company that, after privatisation, was flooded with accountants. Before that I could have spent £5k and explained it later. After that everything went though an ever increasing cabal of accountants. We worked out that at one point it was costing them around £100 to asses whether I could have a £5 item. It got the the point where we spent £30k on overtime to meet a timeslot we had arranged with a supplier only for the work to be done on time but the slot was missed because I could no longer sign to have the tape with the design sent to the US ($24!!!) and those up the tree refused to even think about it. Apparently I should have known the procedures would change randomly and taken that into account.
And that, right there, is how "The Usual Suspects (TM)" are still the #1 way that the UKG spends most of its IT £.
UKG is a cash cow for them because they've put in the time and effort to make it so.
"It's too much effort for such a small order." Make it a template document and chase a dozen.
Then if they are all refused lawyer up and take procurement to court. You have to stand your ground and fight. Something most SME's don't seem to get.
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Sadly, there is absolutely no equivalent of Media Markt in the UK. I don't know why they haven't opened branches here as they have in the Netherlands etc. They would destroy the competition, such as it is.
Sometimes the dearth of alternatives is regional, not national. Here in the Lower Hudson Valley region of NY, no major chains want to move here because the economy is so depressed there's no money to be made here. And with the demise of Ripoff Shack and Circuit Shitty (Radio Shack and Circuit City) your only alternative is "Best" Buy, that doesn't believe in actually stocking product.
'gold plated HDMI cable'
I have literally had that conversation in Dixons. I went in to buy a FreeView box, a youth pounced on me, telling I didn't want FreeView, I wanted Sky, and I said 'no, you want commission for selling Sky, and I don't want a monthly subscription.' So, I chose my FreeView box, and then he produced said gold plated HDMI cable, telling me I'd get a much better picture with it. Sad thing was I think he actually believed this to be true, it wasn't just sales patter.
I was in PC World years ago, before I left the UK. There was a saleshole trying to fob a customer off with a Psion Surfer modem for 150UKP... He was extolling the virtues of the modem and I listened for 5 minutes as he gave his spiel.
Then I butted in, saying, yes, the Psion had just won an award in PC Pro's modem round-up. The saleshole smiled widely... Then I finished my sentence, the best modem for under 100UKP. His grin turned upside down.
I worked for an IT organisation where corruption was a potential problem, and for anything under £100 total order value I decided 1 quote was usually OK. You expect it to be sanity checked by the manager signing it off, and there is not much to be made by defrauding such an order value versus the cost of bureaucracy / employee time in having to obtain multiple quotes.
(I also set £100 - £1000 2 quotes needed, and > £1000 at least 3 - which worked just fine for the time I was there.)
and a purchasing officer, Audit would have rightly criticized this waste of time as not value for money. For once the credit card replacement for petty cash was the right way to go. You Poms really have a public Service devoted to mocking the small business sector, don't you. Don't let the clever fools running the Oz PS into the ground know, they will want to copy it.
> Whose name is on it?
> Name, shame and fire.
No, quite the opposite. The person who raised this is clearly frustrated at being prevented from doing their job by the mass of petty bureaucratic rules being taken to the extreme, and has done so as a protest.
There needs to be some citizen awarded gongs - the anti-Queen's Honours perhaps - that can be given to people like this.
How hard is it, if you're a small supplier, to script an auto-generated response to such requests with a standard 99GBP cost for said item?
That way if you win, quids in! (and I think you'd be surprised - even in the private sector with a lumbering no-room-to-manoevure purchasing system which seems to require a 6 month audit just to get a new supplier of coffee coasters on board - I've certainly bought such mundane and cheap things like a 10m of hookup wire for 35 quid a reel just because they were the only supplier to quote and provide next day delivery.
Due to insurance purposes for offsite working, it was mandatory for me to hire a car for a day from Avis if I wanted to drive to Maplins - I had to provide that option to purchasing as well to get the go ahead - that option was 7 quid more expensive. Took me 45 minutes to be compliant with the process - which charged out at engineering rates of 90GBP/hr. Pork barrels and troughs? they're everywhere.)
"There's the bid document to complete, then the anti-slavery documentation, then the evidence of being an equal opportunities employer."
While onboarding as a supplier for a large services company I recently had to provide proof that we have at least £10m employers insurance in case we are sued by one of our own employees, that we have health and safety policies in place and *enforced*, that we are equal opportunities etc...
They also insisted that we provided proof that we have measures in place to prevent sexual discrimination and harassment in the work place.
The funny bit, Its my company, Im the only employee.
"The funny bit, Its my company, Im the only employee."
So what they're asking you to do is black up (or white up, hey its equal rights), dress in womens (mens) clothes and act gay (overtly hetero)? Is that how an individual demonstrates equality?
I suggest you call a meeting to discuss with your team.
@d3vy .....
I can see they would have issue with your company.
Unless there is something very strange happening 100% of the employees at your company have the same ethnicity, age group, religious belief, race, colour, gender........ Sounds like extreme discrimination to me ;-)
Of course if I'm wrong and there is diversity then perhaps it's not impossible that one of your "employees" would choose to sue "yourself".
Of course if I'm wrong and there is diversity then perhaps it's not impossible that one of your "employees" would choose to sue "yourself".
You could of course sack yourself, then sue yourself for unfair dismissal.
Then as a shareholder sue the management for damaging the share price.
Dear Sir,
you are not legally obliged to proof any of these things unless you have at least 5 employees in total (including you, if you're on the payroll).
I'm surprised your client wasn't aware of the size of your organisation and that therefore such questions, really, aren't relevant.
Regards,
Guus
Guus,
They were well aware of the size of the company and its all well and good saying I'm not legally obliged to provide it, but then they're not legally obliged to set me up as a supplier and give me work...
They put up the hoops, I jump through them. It's just how it works. :)
"insisted that we provided proof that we have measures in place to prevent sexual discrimination and harassment in the work place.In the 1980s and 90s I was in much the same situation. I found that sexually harassing myself was terribly boring...The funny bit, Its my company, Im the only employee."
In the 1980s and 90s I was in much the same situation. I found that sexually harassing myself was terribly boring...
I refer the PP to my previous response
How true your comments were. I have been retired for some years but an associated company had even worse rules than yours. One 'command centre' had a critical capacity issue with the power feed to the site. The manager needed more seats so took the wise route of buying LED displays on petty cash for just over £100 a time rather than £2,000 per throw from the 'supplier of choice' As a circa £100 item they were not capitalised and were classed as expendable so did not justify a supplier's maintenance agreement. He also saved the cost of a new power supply, (£50,000 plus) and its follow on higher bills. Mind you their procurement cycle time for new kits was up to 12 months. This did not sit well with a just in time style desire to buy kit to service new contracts.The different business in which I worked had a customer first service ethic, so we ended up servicing both ends of the deal with equipment. (The same brilliant unit had even managed to sign off on empty racks 'as ready for service', so their super systems really worked well. The customer suffered a two week's delay while we, not the sister bunch organised the missing equipment to arrive, oops.)
"How hard is it, if you're a small supplier, to script an auto-generated response to such requests with a standard 99GBP cost for said item?"
Exactly as hard as it is for the procurer to auto-generate the request for compliance purposes whenever a nonstandard equipment request hits the support system.
That is to say not at all.
That is to say that's probably exactly what is happening here. Supplier is signed up as small/sme equipment supplier, so gets auto-spammed with auto-generated RFQs so they can never say they were left out of the procurement process.
I think all the small people should consider a "blind" biding process, to see where the floor is in the procurement.....so all tender away.
Think I will start mine at £30,000 as it is a special one off procurement, which therefore means I have to put a specialist on the job who will require a manager and project manager....project plans will need to be drawn up and a factory visit to China. All very essential.
It has been a while since I worked for a local council, but I am guessing that whoever put this out to tender did it to cover their own back to show that when they ordered the 3 quid Amazon cable they were getting 'best value' as they are told they have to do. It's doubtful that the usual IT suppliers would better that price. It's ridiculous bureaucracy to have to do this for such a low value item. I don't remember our department having to do this for such small items but it was 10 years ago. We would often buy small items such as the odd replacement, keyboard, mice, DVD-ROM drive etc from the local PC World down the road.
Used to work for a Research agency in Europe. We were not allowed to purchase from Amazon. Fullstop. even if they were the cheapest. We were also not allowed to just go to the local Hardware store (without filling out all the travel paperwork as if we were travelling to the otherside of the world). If we wanted screws we had to purchase them from the one approved online store that had about a 5000% mark-up.
In the end, we went on our own time to the local Hardware store bought the screws and our Boss (who was actually pretty awesome) paid us back by dipping into the "hospitality" Budget and funding a night down the Pub.
Funnily enough there wasnt particularly strict reporting requirements on the hospitality budget so it got a fair bit of use for this sort of thing...
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