[00:00:00] Sarah Stone: So hello and welcome to Let's Talk Social Value Today I am joined by Angela Benson and Sarah Hinchliffe from the Association of Proposal Management Professionals, and we're going to be talking about social value. Bid management and how social value can get integrated into bids [00:00:30] and everything about that, which I'm very excited about.

[00:00:31] But Angela, Sarah, thanks so much for joining me. Can I start by asking you, can you tell us a little bit about what APMP

[00:00:39] Angela Benson: is and what you guys do as well? Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for inviting us today, the Association for Proposal Management Professionals or ap. PMP is a professional association and it provides certification and resources for proposal bid writing professionals or anyone involved in the business of proposals.

[00:00:59] We help people [00:01:00] improve their skills and network mentoring. It is present. It's a chapter organisation. There's chapters in over 75 countries around the world, including one of the largest chapters right here in the uk. So Sarah and I are members of the APMP uk, and we are also volunteers for APMP UK in the social value working group.

[00:01:22] Sarah is the chair and I'm one of the board members, and we work on the topic of social value to help educate and also be a [00:01:30] voice for our professionals in the social value space. Amazing.

[00:01:33] Sarah Stone: And Sarah?

[00:01:34] Sarah Hinchliffe: Yeah, so I founded the group in 2021. So I am a freelance bid professional with a sales background, and I got involved in social value quite some time ago, and I'll explain a bit more about that as we go on.

[00:01:47] But I saw an opportunity to really help members to get to grips with social value when it became a much bigger subject for us all. And so, yeah, we run the social value group and that [00:02:00] basically involves creating resources and assets for the members. And also, as Angela just said, really to be a voice. And that means that we participate in some of the external forums.

[00:02:11] So for example, we have a seat on the national social value task force. And we have a sort of six monthly liaison with the cabinet office.

[00:02:18] Sarah Stone: So the working group, you have a direct line into the cabinet office, and are you one of the channels that they use to engage with bid Writing professionals?

[00:02:25] Sarah Hinchliffe: Yes, absolutely.

[00:02:26] So we provide feedback to the cabinet [00:02:30] office that we gather through formal measures such as a survey. We've done two surveys in the last. Three years, and also gathering informal feedback from, say, conferences and just generally talking to people in the APMP. And we provide formal feedback to the cabinet office on how suppliers and the bid community is actually finding social value, how it's being implemented by the buyers, and the challenges that we face and the recommendations that we suggest to try and improve things.

[00:02:57] Sarah Stone: I bet that's fun, actually, I [00:03:00] can imagine some of the conversations. How many people are in your chapter in the APMP in the UK and and how big's the working group?

[00:03:04] Angela Benson: So in the working group, we currently have 10 members, and in the wider chapter we have around 1500 active members. So it's a lot. [00:03:14] What roles do they do?

[00:03:14] Sarah Stone: Are they bid managers, are they bid writers? Are they heads of social value?

[00:03:18] Angela Benson: Most of our members in the social value volunteer group are involved in bids and proposals in some way. So they're bid writers or they head up bid departments. I don't believe we have any people who are specifically dedicated [00:03:30] to social value, although Sarah, correct me if I'm wrong, we, we have had members in the past who are specifically focusing on social value, but most of our members have been involved through their bid work.

[00:03:41] Sarah Stone: That's really exciting actually, because I think. One of the gaps of knowledge in the social value world, particularly in the application in procurement, is amongst procurement professionals. You have a lot of people that understand social value and they really get it, and they tend to be your heads of social value, but people that understand procurement and social [00:04:00] value are much.

[00:04:01] Rarer, I think if I can be quite so frank. So it's brilliant to hear that you've got this group of bid professionals. And Angela, I didn't ask you what's your day job?

[00:04:09] Angela Benson: Oh, my day job, I work for a global logistics firm as a global head of bid management for them, and that's how I was exposed to social value through a few of our UK public procurement contracts.

[00:04:21] And I got very interested in the subject and how we combine it. So as you mentioned, Sarah, you know if there are few people who overlap between procurement [00:04:30] and social value. And I think the same can be said of the bid side. So those of us who are responding to bids, managing proposals, there's not a lot of overlap between expertise or knowledge of social value.

[00:04:41] Yeah. And knowledge of the bid and tendering process. So there was a really niche area and I very interested, and that's what led me to join Sarah's group.

[00:04:50] Sarah Stone: I was gonna ask Sarah, what made you set the working group up?

[00:04:55] Sarah Hinchliffe: So, yeah, this comes on to a little bit to how social values changed over the past [00:05:00] few years.

[00:05:01] I mean, I think probably everybody knows that the Social Value Act originally came in in 2012, and for several years it was really just sort of guidance and sort like an advisory to bias, to include social value. But what we did find was that. It really took hold in the construction space and whilst I typically in my day job work with technology companies, I happened to have one construction client, and so probably back in 2015, 2016, [00:05:30] I started helping them and it made a lot of sense in the construction industry because of the sort of local.

[00:05:36] Sector, building schools, hospitals, whatever. But then obviously in 2020 when PPP oh six 20 came out and everybody started to realize that social value was going to affect everybody going forward and was going to become mandatory in the public sector. So this is public sector specific. I'm talking here.

[00:05:54] So when that happened, I realized. The, the sort of work I'd been doing with my construction client was [00:06:00] gonna become very relevant to more of my clients and indeed the whole of the APMP. So I offered to set the group up to try and help initially educate people in what social value was. And as time's gone by we continue to do that because there are still some people who are very new to it, even after three or four years of finding that it's mandatory for us in the public sector, there's still small companies, particularly who are very new to it.

[00:06:25] So our aim is to help people understand it because now it's very much a part of everyday [00:06:30] lives. It's in virtually every single public sector bid up to a 10% waiting value, and people have to get serious about it if they want to bid in the public sector. And what we're finding is that in the private sector, whilst the private sector has tended to be much more.

[00:06:46] Around ESG environment, social and governance. From a compliance perspective, there's a sort of corporate due diligence requirement in bids. We are starting to see that social value is creeping into the private sector now [00:07:00] as a contract specific matter, and they're actually looking to the public sector to see how it's been implemented and looking at the public sector for best practice in implementing social value at a contract level.

[00:07:12] Sarah Stone: I see that all the time as well. I've done it for clients as well, so where clients have said, how can we put requirements into our contracts? I've gone to the public sector for the language and for the template, so it's really fascinating to hear you are seeing that as well. And how do you think. Social value has changed.

[00:07:29] [00:07:30] Obviously, you know, you've seen it progress, but what sorts of things are we seeing? Are buyers getting more sophisticated? Are the questions changing?

[00:07:39] Sarah Hinchliffe: If I'm being candid, it hasn't changed as much as it should have done over the last three or four years, and it varies across the different sectors. Even within the public sector, there are sort of sub-sectors as we all know.

[00:07:50] So for example, if you're working with central governments, you will invariably be coming across the social value model, which is a [00:08:00] qualitative only model. So we are not looking to, in a social value model context, to necessarily quantify. From a financial perspective, what people are are offering. So it's a much more qualitative assessment and then it becomes quantitative and committed at the point of contract award.

[00:08:20] So what we're seeing with that is still quite variable implementations of the social value model by buyers. Ideally, what a buyer will [00:08:30] do is choose a particular theme, a particular policy outcome, a particular MAC model, award criteria, and steer the buyer to specific sub-criteria as well. But what we sometimes find is that the model is being used as quite a blunt instrument, and suppliers are just being asked to respond to maybe multiple max, multiple max sub criteria within a very short response length or space [00:09:00] limitation.

[00:09:00] So when it comes to local government, we see a slightly different pattern. Local authorities tend to have much better developed social value strategies because everything is much more locally based. So what we find is it's easy to identify from a local authority website what their social value strategy is, what their priorities are, and they also tend to be much clearer about what they're looking for with the social value ask in each of the tenders.

[00:09:29] [00:09:30] They also, however, tend to be more quantitative in their evaluation, often using one of the commercial models available to use what are called proxy values. People may be familiar with proxy values, where you are using a financial value to represent the commitment that you are making in your social value offer.

[00:09:51] Sometimes it comes down to who's making the largest financial offer, which many of us feel somewhat disinclined towards this approach and prefer the [00:10:00] qualitative approach that we find in the social value model associated with the PPN oh six 20. So yeah, so there are differences. And then again, the NHS.

[00:10:09] They're relatively new at sort of implementing the social value model, so we're seeing a slightly different implementation there. It just sort of depends on the maturity of the organisation and the maturity of the particular buyer involved. So it's quite varied and it's certainly isn't mature across the board.

[00:10:29] [00:10:30] Sadly, I guess that will come with time. In our opinion, it's not there yet.

[00:10:34] Sarah Stone: Yeah. And are there any government departments that maybe embrace social value more than others? And have you ever come across a government department where you don't see social value questions? I haven't, but I haven't done business for every single government department, so, and you guys have got much broader range of experience.

[00:10:48] Angela Benson: We haven't seen one without social value question. Even if it's a very simple one that's only 10%, you know, the mandated minimum, 10% waiting in it. Basically saying, explain your [00:11:00] approach to social value, or as Sarah pointed out, point, picking one of the themes and saying, how will you address climate change with this contract?

[00:11:08] The difficulty for us as a a private organisation and also serving mainly the private sector, is that we are new to public procurement and these requirements, and we are also a service organisation, so we provide centralised services. There's not very many. Pieces of business or contracts where we have a hundred percent dedicated resources, personnel sites, [00:11:30] et cetera.

[00:11:30] We do have some exceptions to that. So the challenge for us is a little bit the shoe on the other foot. How do we respond to questions from buyers where they're looking for contract specific commitments, where they're looking for additionality above and beyond what we're already doing and where they do want quantification in a financial sense where.

[00:11:50] We are still getting to grips with social value as a global organization in the uk specifically, how do we quantify that? So, you know, those are some of the [00:12:00] things we struggle with. Even as a large multinational that's been in business for many, many years. It's an ongoing process to understand how to apply that to your organisation and translate back to the buyer in a way that they understand.

[00:12:12] Sarah Stone: I think lots of people listening will be agreeing with you. And have you found that the social value working group's been helpful when you've got some of those challenges? If you kind of got contacts and people that you've met that you can kind of ring up and say, how am I gonna answer this?

[00:12:27] Angela Benson: Well, I think so.

[00:12:28] It has been really useful [00:12:30] for me just to understand how it works. You know, things like the national social value task force and the procurement and how it all works together to understand that it isn't a one size fits all approach. You know, Sarah laid it out very eloquently of how different organizations in the government and public sector adjacent organisations approach it and.

[00:12:50] That really helps us to understand maybe the specific buyer that we're responding to, to see where they are on that scale and help drive [00:13:00] the market. Engagement conversations actually is where it really helps, you know, to feed in the learnings from the social value group. Some of the things we'll talk about today as well in terms of how to address it within the bid cycle, and it's really in that market engagement.

[00:13:13] We've really learned to tackle it there.

[00:13:16] Sarah Stone:  I wanted to ask about that as well. So, and whether you think the social value section is, is it different to other sections of a bid and should it be treated differently?

[00:13:26] Sarah Hinchliffe: So our first piece of advice to [00:13:30] anybody is to basically integrate and regard the social value section as just another part of the bid, and treat it in the same way that you would treat any other part of the bid.

[00:13:40] So, you know when you receive a tender, you analyse it, and you identify the sort of technical stuff. The commercial stuff. Now you identify the social value stuff. You understand the social value requirements, then you get your resources and your team organised, and you probably have some sort of social value lead or [00:14:00] somebody who's going to deal with that social value piece.

[00:14:03] But just like with every other part of the bid, you've got to make sure you understand the story you are going to tell. So you need a social value strategy or. Story or approach for this particular bid. So you need to go off and work that out. So think before you write, but be our advice. Go and work that out with whoever in your organization is going to be responsible for, you know, providing the resources, delivering the offer that you are going to make [00:14:30] pricing up or costing up that offer.

[00:14:32] So you have to get your organisation on board and the different people and functions on board from the beginning. To work out the story that you are going to tell. What is that story of the commitment that you are going to make and the delivery that you are going to do and the impact that it's going to have, and how are you going to describe that?

[00:14:52] Is it qualitative? Is it quantitative? Do you need to fill in certain models or. Use these proxy values or whatever. So you need to understand the customer ask [00:15:00] in terms of the sort of strategic ask if you like. And also then the construct of the tender and the response they're asking for. You need to get your story straight and then you need to do what you would hopefully normally do, which is plan out your response.

[00:15:16] We can't emphasise too much how important content planning is in this whole process. And then when you've got all of that. Straight you will in a position to write your answer, and then you go through the river review and approval loops that you'd normally go through. So it's [00:15:30] exactly the same process, and the idea that it's something off on the side or it's something you do at the end is completely wrong, you need to bring it right in as a core part is 10%.

[00:15:43] And that 10% can make a difference of winning and losing. So it's really important to sort of get to grips with it from the beginning and get the right people on it and probably have somebody leading that piece. Like you'd probably have people leading the delivery piece and the technical piece and the commercial piece.

[00:15:58] So that's how you [00:16:00] should do it. And you know, follow bid best practice, which is essentially what APMP is all about. So what we've done with our resources is adapted best practice bidding and sort of created some advice and guidance assets around how to guides that sort of thing, which you can access if you are an APMP member in our community area.

[00:16:20] So essentially it's a core part of the bid that you have to deal with in exactly the same way as the rest of the bid, hopefully following best practice.

[00:16:29] Sarah Stone: You've also [00:16:30] got the graphic, haven't you, that you've produced, which really clearly shows that process that you just described. And I think we're gonna share it with the show notes when we put out this podcast.

[00:16:39] Allow a lot of the resources are obviously in the member area. Is there anything that people can access if they're not a member or where can they go if they want to sort of see this written down?

[00:16:48] Sarah Hinchliffe: We do tend to produce things for the members. There are a lot of publicly available resources. We have blogs on the APMP UK website.

[00:16:58] We have a social value [00:17:00] page, and we put our blogs up there and those blogs cover lots of different subjects and there are a lot of publicly available resources too that people can cover. Yeah. But we are a member specific organisation,

[00:17:11] Sarah Stone: So Angela. What advice would you give somebody who, I get asked this a lot, or people will say, oh, we are not doing as well in social values as we want to be.

[00:17:19] You know, we put a lot of effort into our answer. We thought we'd written a really strong answer, and we've just got this feedback back, which is not as good as we'd like it to be. What advice would you give to somebody who's in that [00:17:30] position?

[00:17:30] Angela Benson: There are a number of things that I think anyone can take up.

[00:17:33] I mean, as part of bid management research is highly encouraged. Understand your buyer, understand their priorities, and look at anything they've put out around their social value strategy and the areas they're really looking at. Particularly as Sarah I've mentioned, local governments. This will be very clear, so make sure you're speaking to what their strategy is.

[00:17:56] And in your market engagement, draw them out. Ask them about social [00:18:00] value, what their approach, what's interesting, what's important. Those are really key preparation. If you're in the moment and writing your answer, like any good answer for any section of your bid, it should be specific. It should be measurable in some way, whether that's qualitative or quantitative.

[00:18:16] And it should be very clear. You know, the trap we fall into in the private sector is we have a lot of marketing speak, a lot of very fluffy. Nice answers about social impact and things like that, which don't always make the grade when you're talking [00:18:30] about social value, which is a very specific thing. So look at that.

[00:18:34] And then also, not everyone has downtime between their bids, depending on the size of your bid team and the amount of workload you're managing. But our government bid team spends a lot of time capturing. Business cases, writing down examples, following up on what the company is doing in social value, and preparing that to have a bank of resource, a knowledge library, so to speak, to use in their bids and tender responses.

[00:18:59] [00:19:00] For social value questions so that there's always some reference to draw from and something to talk about, particularly if you need to get in those new things, what you've done since the last tender, or what you're adding and what you're doing differently in this tender as a result of a contract award.

[00:19:15] Sarah Stone: Yeah, that's really good advice. Sarah, have

[00:19:18] you got anything you'd add?

[00:19:19] Sarah Hinchliffe: I would suggest that people focus a hundred percent on the commitments they are making for this specific situation, and then they spend at least [00:19:30] 80% of their response space talking about what they are going to do for this contract, how they're going to do it, and what that will mean to this customer.

[00:19:40] Or the community they're trying to impact. And then the other 20% of the space that you've got can be given over to evidence points to show the customer that you have delivered such things before. But what we tend to find is that people talk an awful lot about generic and standard stuff, which they think is great, [00:20:00] but it is not what is being asked for.

[00:20:02] Yeah. So it really has to be tailored, and you have to get that tailored story straight before you write your answer.

[00:20:09] Sarah Stone: Yeah, you're so right. Andrew and I are both nodding, aren't we vociferous here? Yes. You're So I think when people hear you say that as well and they go back and they look at an answer that's scored poorly, they'll see it.

[00:20:21] Because I think it's one of those things that once people point it out to you, you go, oh, of course. You know, I just couldn't see it. But when you go back and you look at an answer and you see, [00:20:30] well, yeah, it isn't clear what I'm saying, what I'm gonna do, or I've said a lot about what I have done in the past.

[00:20:34] Mm-hmm. But not what the sort of. So what does it mean for the contract? That's really, really good advice. Couple of questions before we finish. One question about feedback, because lots of people say to me, oh, we don't get feedback from Procurers and I tend to see quite a lot of feedback. I dunno if that's because I work on the high value bids.

[00:20:50] So the high value bids, you're more likely to have, you know, dedicated resource on the buyer side. You're more likely to get detailed feedback, but lots of people say they just don't get any [00:21:00] feedback from Pro Procurers. Is this common something that you see a lot and what advice do you give to people? I think you can ask for it, right?

[00:21:06] Is that true? Absolutely.

[00:21:08] Sarah Hinchliffe: In the public sector, you are supposed to get feedback, and if you don't get feedback, you should chase feedback. I do agree that you don't always get it, and what you get isn't necessarily useful, but you Absolutely. It's big best practice to get feedback, so just. Drive your absolute hardest to get it.

[00:21:24] Sarah Stone: Can you just send 'em an email and say, please can have some feedback? Yeah, absolutely. They should do it as a matter of course. [00:21:30] Ask, ask, ask again. Because when you get the feedback, it's really helpful, isn't it? You know, there's been, yeah. Answers that I've written and I've thought I've done a really good job and they're really proud of it, you know?

[00:21:38] And got a, I thought it was definitely a 10, got an eight, got the feedback, and you go, oh, okay. I see. You can learn from it, can't you? Yeah, absolutely. Do you think it's possible to get a 10? Do you think it's possible to get full marks now in social value? Because I think in the early days they were quite easy to get, but I think it's getting harder and harder.

[00:21:56] It is, in my experience,

[00:21:58] Sarah Hinchcliff: it is getting harder [00:22:00] and I think it is part of that whole topic. We covered briefly at the beginning about how things have changed. So was the setting of the questions and the context for the questions may not have improved as much as we'd like. Perhaps the evaluation sophistication has improved.

[00:22:17] So, yeah, I've seen some quite detailed feedback. Some of which has like, you been a little disappointing in places 'cause having thought we wrote a good answer, but it very much comes down to [00:22:30] this what, how. Why so what? So just remember who, why, what, when, where, how, and add your so what on the end, and then prove it.

[00:22:38] And if you just test that all the way through. But I haven't seen many tens in recent times, but I agree with you, probably three years ago it wasn't too difficult to get a 10 'cause people didn't really know what they were marking. Whereas I think much harder now.

[00:22:52] Sarah Stone: Especially when to get a 10, you have to exceed the requirements or demonstrate additional value, and there's a lot of sub-criteria.

[00:22:59] So [00:23:00] even just to meet the requirements is a huge commitment that actually to exceed them is, I often say to people, just go for a seven or go for an eight, whatever the band is, because to get a 10 is. Yeah, I mean, I can't guarantee you will and you might end up having to commit a whole load extra and you still might not get it.

[00:23:16] Yeah, I dunno. Angela, have you seen

[00:23:17] Angela Benson: that? What do you guys see? I'd have to go to my public procurement specialist for more recent data. I would agree that it was easier a few years ago. We definitely got top marks, but [00:23:30] exceeding requirements is very difficult. We are finding it very difficult just to meet requirements with.

[00:23:35] Quantifying, you know, we've gone through a whole Yeah. Strategy as a company just to be able to measure our social value and what we're doing so that we can translate it into tendering. So yes, I think that is a hurdle many organizations are probably facing.

[00:23:49] Sarah Stone: I'd love if anyone's listening and they have, you know, they've got examples of where they've exceeded their requirements.

[00:23:54] 'cause it would be really good to see, wouldn't it? You know, just to see what that looks like.

[00:23:58] Angela Benson: Actually, that's a great point, Sarah. You [00:24:00] know, we're always looking for case studies and information, you know, from the ground of what people are experiencing and some really good examples of social value initiatives or as you say, you know, winning proposals and getting top marks in that field.

[00:24:14] We would love to see some of that, so thank you. Brilliant. So how can people reach out to you? How can they connect with you? There's a couple of ways. So we've mentioned our website, APMP uk.co.uk. That's where you can start with APMP. Find our social value [00:24:30] blog area and see if you're interested in joining.

[00:24:33] If you do join up with the APMP uk, you can join our APMP UK social value LinkedIn Group where we do discussion, we raise topics. That's how we generally interact with the community around social value. And of course, we always welcome volunteers to our social value working

[00:24:50] Sarah Stone: group.

[00:24:51] Angela Benson: Amazing.

[00:24:51] Sarah Stone: And joining the A PMP, Sarah, I'm definitely gonna join after this.

[00:24:55] I found people who love talking about the social media and procurement and the technical elements [00:25:00] as much as I do, and that's like a happy place.

[00:25:02] Sarah Hinchliffe: Yeah, I mean it's a really vibrant and sort of welcoming community that's been really helpful over the years to me personally. So yeah, it's not a huge signup fee.

[00:25:12] It's an American dollar signup fee. I'm not sure what the very latest fee is, but it's a hundred ish pounds a year. There is just so many resources available and then, you know, other things cost something on top. Yeah. But certification costs. Yeah, there's an annual conference which you pay to come to, and the webinars, in fact, we should have [00:25:30] mentioned, we from our group.

[00:25:31] We put on quarterly webinars, we choose a topic and we arrange a one hour webinar. And those are open to non-members too. And we Oh, advertise those on our, we have a LinkedIn page as well as a LinkedIn group. So the group is members only, but the page is not. So we advertise our webinars on the page and non-members can come to those.

[00:25:52] Right. We'll put the link in as well. Lovely. And there's

[00:25:54] Sarah Stone: also, it strikes me that we just obviously focus on social value in this session. 'cause this is. What I'm interested in, but [00:26:00] I'm guessing there's working groups for all kinds of different topics, and if you're a a bid professional, you're gonna get loads of value from the APMP.

[00:26:07] Mm-hmm. You know, over and above social value, knowledge, and expertise.

[00:26:11] Angela Benson: Yeah. As you mentioned, Sarah, it's that niche of people who really love to talk about tendering procurement, you know, and winning work and all the different subset means of that. So. Most people when they join, and I certainly felt that you found your people.

[00:26:25] Yeah, you have.

[00:26:26] Sarah Stone: They're the only people that understand what it's like the week before Christmas when the [00:26:30] public sector decides to get everything out. Indeed. When everybody else is having Christmas parties and enjoying themselves and we are all going. No. Couldn't you have waited till January?

[00:26:43] Angela Benson: Thank you very much Manic.

[00:26:44] Brilliant talking to you. And you Sarah. Thank you again for inviting us.

[00:26:49] Sarah Stone: I am Sarah Stone, and you've been listening to Let's Talk Social Value. You can find all our previous episodes on our website or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you found this useful, then please do share the episode with your [00:27:00] networks and consider leaving us a review.

[00:27:02] I'd love to know what you think of that episode, so please reach out to me and let me know. You can find me on LinkedIn or contact me on our website, www.samtaler.co uk. See you next time.