How can everyone win at public ICT contracts?

Participants at the procurement seminar organised by Business Espoo on 15 March 2023 heard many interesting addresses and discussed how to best reach the impact-related goals of ICT contracts, in particular.

In recent years ICT contracts have evoked emotions and raised a discussion, not only in Espoo or the Helsinki metropolitan area but in the whole country. It is positive that this discussion has received a reaction at the national level, and solutions to challenges with ICT contracts are considered among the Ministry of Finance and the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, Olli Jylhä, Senior Adviser of the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, reported in the seminar.

The problem with agreements from contracting entities’ perspective was summed up well by Raija Kaljunen, Specialist at Laurea University of Applied Sciences, who described the Procurement Impact model. The challenge for anyone preparing a procurement is knowing the best way to approach the challenge underlying the procurement. This wisdom can be found in the marketplace.

People in Espoo recognise this too, and a market dialogue is a mandatory element in all competitive tendering. If this is not organised, authorisation for it must be obtained from Chief Procurement Officer Pihla Hynynen. Espoo encourages businesses to contact units that use products and services even before the tendering stage. At the event Hynynen illustrated the size category and procedures of the City’s procurements and how contracts are reformed. In its procurements, Espoo emphasises a forward-heavy approach, which means the importance of preparation.

ICT contracts also involve possibilities of small businesses and start-ups and opportunities for new and different solutions. Valia Wistuba, Development Manager at the City of Espoo, described in her address the experiment-based Digital Agenda programme, which aims to find new and different solutions for digitalisation of municipal services and to also offer new actors a route of access to cooperation with the City. Small companies have many different opportunities for submitting tenders at large tendering rounds, as a consortium for example.

“Preparation of ICT contracts is extremely complicated and time-consuming work. A contract may still stop at halfway from its objective, despite efficient and thorough preparation”, Pauli Sinivuori, IT Manager at the City of Espoo, stated at the panel discussion. “The operation improves after every procurement.”

Contracts have operational impact goals, and they must also implement the City’s values and objectives. Many contracting entities find that the implementation of impact goals is a challenge. In ICT contracts responsibility can be influenced in many ways, like recyclability of devices after the end of their service life, a green approach to energy use at server rooms, and even by how the code of an application is written.

“This year the KEINO Competence Center will publish a bank of criteria that will make it easier to attain sustainability goals”, said Pentti Komssi from the Federation of Espoo Enterprises.

SC Software’s Senior Consultant Veera Lavikkala highlighted the importance of contacts for all companies. A supplier must know the right time to contact the contracting entity. If you wish to market your own products or services, you must contact the party at the contracting entity who would use the product or service in the city’s sector of operation.

“You can use marketing to raise a need for competitive tendering and influence how the need is accounted for in budgeting and how planning for the procurement is started”, Lavikkala emphasised.

This is an important stage especially in the case of a product or service. Usually, actual tendering and the related market dialogue are handled by a centralised unit within the contracting entity. In the market dialogue phase you are in contact with procurement professionals, and the important aspect is not marketing but affecting the contents of the call for tenders. The market dialogue is the moment when you must indicate which planned requirements would prevent you from submitting your own tender. When several tenderers clearly express these matters and make a proposal for requirements that are fair for the tenderer, the contracting entity can build an efficient call for tenders. For the company, time spent on the market dialogue is a marketing investment that has the most direct effect on potential sales.

Responding to a call for tenders, or submitting a tender, may give pause to entrepreneurs. Are they ready to spend dozens of hours on submitting a tender, without knowing whether it will lead to a sale? You can lower the threshold by reviewing purchasing terms of procurements used frequently and by thinking how your own product or service would work in them.

“You should also complete the ‘elevator pitch’ for your own product. If you came in second on a bidding round, you can order the documents of the winning offer from the contracting entity and benchmark your own tender against them”, instructed Director Marko Vilen from the Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce.

Did you miss the event? Don’t worry, you can watch a recording of the seminar on Business Espoo’s YouTube channel(external link, opens in a new window).

Those who did not participate in competitive tendering can obtain procurement decisions from the City of Espoo website for two weeks. Even after this, a procurement decision can be ordered by requesting it from the procurement centre by email: hankinta@espoo.fi

Officeholder decisions on the City’s website.

Further information about the City’s procurements and competitive tendering procedures, in summary.

Hankinta-Suomi is a joint action programme of the Ministry of Finance and the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, tasked with compiling the making and development of public procurements under one umbrella. Read more about the subject on the website of the Ministry of Finance(external link, opens in a new window) (in Finnish).

If you have any questions about public procurements, please contact:

Pentti Komssi, Public Procurement Agent | KEINO Change Agent, Federation of Espoo Enterprises Tel. +358 44 3532045, pentti.komssi@yrittajat.fi

_ _ _

Text: Pentti Komssi
Photos: Sari Mäkisalo
_ _ _

Business Espoo is a service network for companies and entrepreneurs in Espoo and the surrounding municipalities, formed by seven organisations. Our goal is to increase the number of jobs and vitality in Espoo by producing customer-oriented, cost-effective and high-quality services for companies and entrepreneurs.The actors that form Business Espoo are City of Espoo, Enter Espoo, Federation of Espoo Enterprises, Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce, Omnia, Uusimaa TE Office and EnterpriseEspoo. More information: BusinessEspoo.com