As our suppliers may already know we are trying to setup a series of supplier expose events or ‘Supplier Expos’. These events are being designed to pull together G-Cloud suppliers with suitable potential public sector buyers – allowing the promotion of G-Cloud services and demonstrating the breadth and innovation of the service offerings currently available through the CloudStore.
We want to ensure that we are being fair to our suppliers and giving them all the same opportunities poses quite a challenge in arranging events like this. So, we have decided to split the events up into categories of service with the pilot event being focused on Collaboration services. Based on the success of this event we will move onto the next category of services and use any lessons learnt to improve the quality of the following events.
We met with a selection of G-Cloud suppliers last week to kick off discussions about how best to arrange an event of this nature, which was an incredibly useful session with lots of great ideas put forward – so thanks again for all those in attendance. Don’t worry if you weren’t involved – we will be running events to cover all categories of supplier so you will have your chance. We plan on running these events around the country to ensure that all suppliers and buyers are given equal chances of attending.
One of the suggestions that came out of this session was that the event should be fully catered to the buyers rather than a sales type event. We have taken this idea forward and are meeting with potential buyers to gain their input for the events and make sure they are tailored to the buyers’ preferences.
Alongside this we have been in contact with Intellect who have suggested that they are keen to assist with the organisation, management and promotion of these events. Please bear with us as we are in the early stages of planning but are very pleased with the positive reaction we have received to these events so far and we will keep you posted with our progress – so watch this space!
On a similar theme we are also considering other methods by which we can increase the engagement between our suppliers and potential public sector buyers such as creating a problem/solution page where buyers can outline any ICT issues they are experiencing and allowing suppliers to suggest possible resolutions