The Digital Marketplace’s main purpose is to make it simpler, clearer and faster for those in the public sector to buy what they need to transform their services.
Geoff Chamberlain is a commercial manager at Bristol City Council. As part of the procurement team within a local council, he talks about his experience of using the Digital Marketplace.
[Transcript]
People in the government are there to serve the citizens of the city they live in so it’s all about delivering the best results for the city.
What is the Digital Marketplace?
The Digital Marketplace is a very different approach to purchasing services. You put in a search term and it brings up a list of services that you can buy. You can have an order placed in a matter of hours.
How does it changes things?
Previously, you might have to go and speak to three suppliers. You’d have to spend time prior to that drawing up your tender documents. It’s enabled us to start introducing agile project methodology into the environment here which means we are hopefully more reactive, and we hopefully deliver quicker.
A different approach
It’s so different from how you typically approach procurement. It really does enable a different approach to the marketplace. I’d say give it a try, scope out the kind of thing you need and see what’s returned and see what’s available It’s digitising services. One of the things that we’re aiming for is to provide a digital service that’s so good you won’t want to use anything else.