Public sector should buy more from small business
Levelling the playing field for UK SMEs
In an article, UK SMEs Get Green Light from Government, published Friday 9 September 2005, the UK eGov monitor Newsdesk reports that public sector buyers now require 'good reason' not to use smaller suppliers.
The minister's call came in light of a new report on the "benefits of public sector procurement from small business" which concludes that government buyers should "seriously consider" bids from smaller firms.
The 122-page study reels off a list of twenty success stories where forward-thinking public bodies received huge benefits through working with small and medium-sized enterprises.
Somewhat surprisingly the report focuses on single SMEs and seems to ignore the benefits of SME collaborative networks in giving "virtual scale" to small businesses to enable them to bid for the larger public sector contracts normally reserved for major suppliers.
For example the power and advantages of well organised small business networks of IT suppliers is discussed in Achieve real competitive advantage by partnering with small IT Vendor networks.
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