O'Hare urges tech firms to join forces

SMALL technology firms have been urged to form alliances to bid for public contracts.

The Scottish Government recently conceded that the sector has been disadvantaged due to often arduous tendering procedures that favoured bigger companies. It is streamlining the pre-qualification process under a newly launched Scottish Procurement and Commercial Directorate.

Raymond O'Hare, the former director of Microsoft in Scotland and now a business strategist, said: "In this era of cutbacks, the government and local authorities will be looking to deal with fewer, not more, firms and this means they will gravitate towards bigger companies.

"It is the smart firms putting together a consortium that are more likely to attract attention. Going it alone means very little chance of winning a contract."

O'Hare said one of his new clients recently "bust a gut" to get on the procurement listing and it took them disproportionate amounts of time and effort. "They eventually succeeded. So it can be done, but this was for a particular niche skills area and even here it remains tough to win through. It is far better to look for companies that are already involved in the procurement framework, that you don't compete with, to forge a practical relationship and offer a strengthened complementary service."

O'Hare's words echo those of Sarah Deas, the chief executive of Co-operative Development Scotland, who urged firms to collaborate more by forming consortia to bid for new work.

CDS is a subsidiary of Scottish Enterprise in partnership with Highlands & Islands Enterprise, and Deas said such a move to link up also leads to improved productivity, innovation and efficiencies.