Blog updated on 27th September 2022 by Glenn Cheetham
The UK Find a Tender Service - or FTS for short - has replaced the OJEU process in governing the purchasing process for the UK Government and its agencies and other participating organisations. This is down to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, as the OJEU process was under their rules and regulations.
FTS is a free to use portal that will allow you to find any Contract Notice or an Invitation to Tender (ITT). It also provides access to published Prior Information Notices which show when buying organisations are beginning to look for certain services and wish to engage before an official ITT is published.
In fact, you will also be able to search all CANs too. These are Contract Award Notices, which outline who won a contract, its value and the length of the contract agreed. Especially useful if you want to keep watch on your target markets and competitors!
Public sector opportunities with a value in excess of the following thresholds have to be posted through Find a Tender:
Opportunities for lower value contracts are posted in Contracts Finder in England, while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own dedicated websites at Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, and eSourcingNI or eTendersNI respectively.
As previously mentioned, the Find a Tender portal is now in place instead of OJEU meaning that all UK public sector organisations must publish their procurement needs on this platform where the contract value exceeds the thresholds discussed above.
The work involved in posting and updating information on FTS (or the other portals for smaller value contracts) can be onerous. For those organisations that have invested in advanced procurement systems like Proactis Source to Contract this could also force users to have to manage tender and contract information in two places, which would be time-consuming and error prone.
Users of Proactis S2C will be delighted, therefore, to discover that LAKE have integrated directly into these portals making the publication and update of tenders and contract notices effortless, fast, and error-free.
To find out how LAKE Proactis solutions could help you streamline procurement and control spend, please get in touch via the LAKE website or call me now on 0113 273 7788.
by Glenn Cheetham
Blog Contributor.
