What are the Cool People doing in the Public Sector?

Procurement and innovation - lessons for us all


It depends on your definition of cool, of course, but to my mind the work of procurement professionals pushing collaboration and innovation is to be admired. 

I saw this first hand at the Local Government Procurement Annual Conference in Sydney recently, where people even in remote regional Councils stepped up to work with other LGAs to:

• Standardise processes and accounting practices to develop best practice models for organisations of particular scale or type (the Technology Working Group - various metropolitan/regional/remote Councils);
• Encourage small local businesses to take a tilt at a Council contract in their area where youth unemployment hovers at 30% (Wyong);
• Develop new markets for recyclable waste (glass recycled into road base - Waverley); and 
• Develop common procurement portals in use across various State procurement agencies (VendorPanel - LGP).

We really don't give them enough credit. Not only do they have to meet onerous proof of good governance and regulations surrounding the spending of public money (irrespective of their scale of operations), hitherto many have worked blind or alone, reinventing the wheel. They have one real advantage over private enterprise, however - they aren't afraid to collaborate and share because have a common goal of the public good and, unlike the private sector, even if they are performing the same job, they aren't in competition.

Some of the speakers were people who came up through the ranks via general purchasing and had gone on to undertake further training and development with a global professional association. Others had come from corporate positions into their present role. The most interesting work was where Procurement Managers took a strategic view and helped various divisions to achieve broader organisational goals.

As someone in the private sector who periodically spends a fair amount of time responding to public tenders, I can attest that although some tender questions may at first glance seem peripheral to our activities, often these same questions make us re-evaluate the way we structure our business and come up with new and better ways to operate.

Here's a great tip to share - LGP as an organisation has done a great deal to facilitate work on key industry projects to establish common standards and it also facilitates a mentor/mentee program. Participants can privately put up their hand to receive or offer help (they can even suggest preferred partners) and LGP helps to match suitable professionals up for the purpose. At conferences who wants to publicly admit they want help? I thought their suggestion was utterly sensible. More power to their bow!

The minimum that you need to stay in business today

Last night I went to a free small business marketing talk organised by ITEC, a not for profit small business training organisation that helps businesses learn and network in our region. These kinds of organisations get State and Federal funding and are worth seeking out wherever you are.

The guest speaker was Donna Hanson from Prime Solutions Training & Consulting and she was speaking about technology transitions. Had I come to this meeting two years ago when I returned from a long break raising children, I would have taken more notes, but she covered a number of the marketing tools that I have been checking out for our own Contact Centre business over this period. She's particularly good at nailing the practical basics and her video training materials are used by small business and corporates not keen to retrain their staff every time the version of Office in use changes.

At Well Done we handle support enquiries from the whole gamut of business, from start ups to corporate divisions, and based on some of the questions we field, I thought that Donna's checklist for the bare minimum you need to be taken seriously in business was fair enough.

The minimum you need came down to:

1. Buy a domain name for your emails - free web mail doesn't look serious and professional and a domain is cheap enough to buy. You usually have the email URL and service thrown in and have the option of the web hosting;
2. A landline with at least Voicemail;
3. A mobile with Voicemail;
4. Some serious accounting software - MYOB at least;
5. Broadband internet, not dial up;
6. A working printer with spare ink to hand!
7. A website that is updated regularly.

Although people that are calling us are past the Voicemail fumble and want serious reception on tap, a surprising number still use gmail and hotmail addresses. Donna's view is that you can't be taken seriously in business without a domain name. Our IT engineer's view is more practical - these email services are free but unreliable. 

Their servers can go down, they are more subject to attack, and free webmail is not guaranteed to perform. Messages to web email accounts are far more likely to be overly sensitive to spam filters and messages won't always get through. Why pay us to answer your calls when you may never get the message? It's just not a good use of your time and money to leave this to chance.


Of course, we're talking about the bare minimum standard, and even if you do decide to outsource your reception, there are great differences in what you can hope to achieve with off the shelf call centre industry software and mass market message services and the proprietary technology in use at Well Done... but that's another story!


For more information
Donna has a newsletter with lots of tips that you can sign up for at this website. ITEC also has free online marketing courses for small business worth checking out here.