eXceeding’s acceptance onto G-Cloud 12

We are delighted to announce that eXceeding has been named as an approved government supplier on Crown Commercial Service [CCS]’s G-Cloud 12 framework.

Operated by CCS (the trading fund of the UK Cabinet Office, working on behalf of the UK government to deliver efficiency in procurement in the Public Sector), G-Cloud 12 is designed to encourage public organisations to adopt cloud-based IT computing consulting services.

What are the advantages of cloud computing for public procurement?

1. Economies of scale. Put simply, it’s cheaper for bigger cloud computing folks to make efficiency improvements because they can spread the costs over a larger server base and can afford to have more dedicated folks focused on efficiency improvements.
2. Diversity, aggregation and contention. More users, more diverse users, and more users in different places means computing loads are spread over the day, allowing for increased equipment utilisation. This approach ensures critical mass is achieved easier and the economic benefits of doing so are shared.
3. Flexibility. Cloud installations use virtualisation and other techniques to separate the software from the characteristics of physical servers. Server virtualisation has been happening for decades, however now IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) has arrived for the mass market.

What is G-Cloud 12 and how is it used?

The newest iteration of the framework allows public sector organisations access to over 36,200 services and over 4,750 suppliers, via CCS’s Digital Marketplace.

G-Cloud 12 went live on 28th September 2020 and is planned to run for 12 months from that date, though this could be extended for up to 12 months should CCS see fit to do so. It supersedes the G-Cloud 11 framework, which was due to expire in July 2020 but has since been granted a six-month stay of execution until 18 December 2020 for Covid-19-related reasons.

The framework dates back to 2013 and, since its inception, there has been £6.2bn worth of sales through the G-Cloud framework, with the majority of the business coming from the UK government. CCS reports that approximately 44% of that spend was awarded to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

In keeping with the framework’s original aim to broaden the pool of suppliers from which public sector organisations can procure goods and services, the CCS has reported that 91% of the suppliers on G-Cloud 12 are classified as SMEs.

Why is this so great?

Firstly, by accepting such a high percentage of SMEs to the framework, we would expect to see a fairer (and of course likely more competitive) procurement process – where new and innovative suppliers can have a more direct route to decision makers in public sector organisations.

Crucially, it allows suppliers to bid for cloud-related services and consultancy more efficiently and without the need for a full tender process – something which can be extremely time intensive and often prohibitive for smaller businesses due to availability of resources.

From a public sector perspective, it enables organisations to ensure innovation in their IT supply chains, gives them more options and makes it easier to outsource critical services safely, often at a considerably reduced cost. It also enables them to switch suppliers more efficiently should this be necessary – further mitigating risk to their supply chains.

What does this mean for eXceeding?

Being accepted onto the G-Cloud framework means that eXceeding is effectively ‘pre-approved’ to provide procurement consultancy services to all of the UK public sector organisations. This allows the team to build on its experience of running complex, and fully compliant, procurement processes within the IT and tech space.

Steve Rowland, MD of eXceeding commented:

I’m so proud that eXceeding has been named as an approved G-Cloud supplier. This is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team and their appetite to support public sector organisations with their procurement challenges.

 Given the current climate, the UK public sector has seen unprecedented organisational change – from home working to sometimes severely disrupted supply chains – so the role of expert procurement consultants has never been more important.

Our national network of procurement consultants are well versed in the complexities surrounding compliance and internal process. We also benefit from independent IT category experts, enabling us to manage complex projects, with expert market knowledge and access to the most appropriate, and recommended, suppliers within that category, technology or outsourcing providers.

 We can’t wait to help more organisations meet their 2020/2021 objectives, be that running tenders, saving costs, freeing up resources or reviewing processes, we’d love to hear from you.