CatN goes to Downing Street

By Joe Gardiner Thursday, 21st July 2011

As you may have read in my previous posts, CatN made it to the final stages of the Innovation Launchpad. I was invited to pitch my proposal to a panel of over 100 senior civil servants. Stephen Allot, Crown Commercial Representative (“CCR”) for SMEs at Cabinet Office, commented that, “There is no other room in Europe today that holds as much buying power as this one”.

CatN was in the second phase of presentations for the day and we were pitching to a technical panel, different from the first panel of NHS and DWP experts. Our objective was to engage with Government and make the most of the amazing shortcut that the ILP process had given us.

Following the pitch, 15 civil servants expressed their interest in being contacted by CatN, which made our proposal the 4th most popular on the day and from the total 351 proposals submitted to the website. Now the hard work really begins. We need to make sure we build on these initial successes and keep the dialogue with Government open.

The feedback I received from civil servants present was very positive. WordPress‘ profile in Government is being raised, especially with projects such as the recent DEFRA migration, and this element of my pitch was particularly well received. The key issue I outlined was that a private cloud infrastructure is most valuable when delivered by an SME that saves money through innovation, not by having huge amounts of buying power. Of course when we do have lots of buying power the savings will be even greater! Combining this innovation with the agility to be able to deliver complex solutions in a few days, as opposed to a few months, is the key benefit offered by CatN as an SME.

One piece of interesting feedback we received was that as a small business it’s easy to be perceived as risk-averse, given the levels of investment required to negotiate the various policy guidelines and red tape. We will continue to work hard to put in the investment required to meet these standards, recognising the longer timescales typically involved in .gov.uk procurement.

Helping Government to recommend these benefits particularly in the IT sector is vital for an increase in efficiency and a reduction in expenditure. By communicating this in my pitch I hope to diminish the perceived risk of working with an SME with no Public Sector experience. Proving that you can deliver in the Private Sector is more challenging, and CatN has already done this.

Following the presentations in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills conference centre, all involved were invited to a reception at Number 11 Downing Street. This networking opportunity allowed any civil servants to speak directly to the business representatives. I’m happy to say that numerous leads were opened and it looks as though we’ll be working with some of the businesses involved as well as a Government project soon.

The real test of the success of the Innovation Launchpad process will be in the number of businesses involved winning contracts. It is very encouraging to hear from Sherry Coutu that she expects 6 of the 9 businesses to win a contract, and that she will be holding bi-monthly meetings with members of the Cabinet Office for updates.

Francis Maude’s comments regarding late payments by large companies to SME’s were particularly encouraging.

“Prompt payment is crucial to smaller companies. The Government has an excellent record on paying our bills quickly and we expect our suppliers to do the same and pay sub-contractors well within the 30 day limit. When work has been done, especially by an SME, it is just inexcusable not to pay up quickly for that service.”

We have experienced the impact of late payments ourselves, and this new focus from Francis Maude is extremely encouraging, and suggests that Government is beginning to recognise the value offered by SMEs, especially when we need economic growth.

I will continue to update on our progress engaging Government. Very shortly we will be adding a ‘CatN in the press’ widget to the site so you can also follow our progress there.

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