5 ways to prepare your organisation for the

​UK Government's new Social Value model

It might have been 9 years since the Social Value Act was introduced, but it’s only been 6 weeks since all central government departments have begun explicitly asking their suppliers for social value in all contracts.  The change is in response to Public Procurement Notice 06/20 (released in September 2020) which revealed a new social value model and, it’s fair to say, came as a surprise to many suppliers both large and small.  
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It that includes you and are still struggling to get your head around what social value even is, or how to start preparing your organisation’s response, then we’ve put together this piece just for you. 

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​Turning challenge into opportunity
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Anyone who regularly deals with social value day-to-day, particularly those in local government, will have seen PPN06 hurtling down the track long before it was announced. But this has been a strange year and for lots of sales directors, bid writers and even multinational, strategic government suppliers, it caught them unawares.  
 
More than a month on and there are still lots of public sector suppliers that:
 

• Don’t really know what social value is. 
• Don’t have the systems and processes in place to accommodate it in their bids. 
• Have yet to get buy-in from senior management. 

• Don’t have enough operational transparency to be able to prepare a response - PPN06 covers a vast range of topics, many of which are the responsibility of many different departments.  

If this resonates with you, here are five simple steps you can take to prepare your teams and start responding more effectively using the new model. In fact, now is the time to see this as a commercial opportunity. All your competitors are equally confused which means by getting ahead, you have the opportunity of gaining a competitive advantage. But you must act now. 
 
The good news is that there are probably lots of things you are already doing that will add value to your bids; things that you don’t normally get the chance to talk about to sell your products or services. Do you regularly loose out to cheaper, overseas competitors who undercut you on price but have lower quality products and poor ethical standards?  This is an opportunity to show the public sector that cheaper isn’t always better.  ​

Five things you can do now ​

What can you do?  Based on our experience of working with large, complex organisations, here are five things that you can do now in response to the new government social value model.

1. Get familiar with the new model. 
​PPN06/20 is actually an incredible piece of policy making. Not only is it transformative in the sense of the weighting that it gives to social value outcomes, but the standard questions and evaluating criteria will reduce the burden on suppliers significantly.  Spend time reading the guidance and getting to know the model inside out. 

2. Train your team. 
​Help your staff understand what social value is and what the government is trying to achieve with the new model.  Once they get their heads around what their customers are looking for it will seem a lot easier and less confusing. You can run the sessions in-house or outsource them to a third party. Either way, the objective should be to get everyone on the same page. We’d also recommend inviting none bid writing/sales team colleagues to any training you do so that you really understand their perspective. This will help you to better articulate your social value offer to a public sector buyer. ​

​3.  Conduct a gap analysis. 
​Work closely with your project delivery teams to ‘lift the hood’ on your organisation. What do you actually do and how do you do it? How does your business actually deliver your products and services and who is responsible for what? Engage with your back-office teams including HR, Finance and Supply Chain to help. This might be a bit of a challenge while lot of teams continue to work remotely, but this fact-finding mission will pay dividends. Often bid writing teams are under huge pressure when putting together large complex bids on a tight deadline. If you know in advance who to ask, or have pre-approved information or copy to include it will make your life so much easier.   

4.  Be Prepared. 
​Look at the outcomes PPN06/20 specifies and  write some draft answers that show what your organisation already does to deliver on these.  While there may be nuances in the questions that come out, the PPN06 framework can be used to create ‘lines’ on each of the outcomes that are relevant to your business and the contracts you most commonly deliver. Consulting with key internal stakeholders, such as legal, to get language and copy signed off which will save you time in the future. Assign an individual to review it regularly to keep the information up-to-date.

5.  Set up the right systems and processes. 
​Identify what pathways you will use to deliver on your commitments and report on the outcomes. Who will take responsibility? What information will they need to collect? How do you want them to report on it? Getting this right will not only help you to win the contract initially and fulfill it to the best of your ability, but it will make for a great case study that will open up new business opportunities with new and existing clients.

These five things are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to maximising the commercial benefits of PPN06/20.

If you’d like to find out more, contact us to start a conversation.  ​​​

This article first appeared in the Social Value Files. To receive more like this, sign up for the Social Value Files newsletter, a monthly round up of all things Social Value covering jobs, events, and original think pieces.

As one of the UK’s most ambitious social value agencies, we’re helping businesses place social value at the heart of their commercial strategy.  ​Contact us to find out how we could help you.

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