Define

First and foremost, a contracting authority should understand who the players in the market are and how many are there. Early market engagement helps you build a picture of the market, any supply chain risks, available routes to market, potential risks to competition (if there is a monopoly or oligopoly) and many other factors that will drive your overall commercial strategy and, in the end, your procurement strategy. You can also start to build a strategy of addressing market risks (e.g. what will do to develop the market?).

Remember that your service is not just about operational delivery. You should also consider how the market can meet your organisational social value goals. Use market engagement to educate the suppliers on your social value proposition and also on the Well-being of Future Generations Goals. By building a better understanding, suppliers will be able to put forward a better social value proposition when bidding for work, enabling you to meet your internal goals.

Early market engagement gives you the opportunity to refine your requirements by checking them with the market. You can gather feedback on clarity, deliverability, KPIs, social value and more. The end result will be a better specification/ set of requirements that suppliers understand, culminating in better responses to your tender.

Whilst the service delivery leads in your organisation may be experts in the thing they need to procure, the market can help deepen your technical understanding of the requirements and also show you the art of the possible.

In the same way as publishing your pipeline notice can improve and encourage competition, early market engagement can do the same. Suppliers can understand more about your organisation and you can be on their radar. By actively engaging with the market, suppliers will look out for tenders and be ready to submit a quality bid.

By talking to the market early, you can gather insights into the latest innovation related to your requirement. It is likely there will be options of delivering your requirement in a different way. You can use early market engagement to build an understanding of the innovation as well as consider whether these will present a value for money proposition.