Our recent Sales & Marketing Forum examined the position that suppliers to the public sector find themselves in now. Our speakers on the night were James Gardner, CTO, Department for Work and Pensions, Colin Cram, Former Director, North West Centre of Excellence, and Simon Carter, Marketing Director, UK Government Division, Fujitsu.

A write-up of the session is available to read here, covering four key sections:

1. Why is the public sector so important?

“Put simply, annual government procurement is huge — at £220 billion it represents 0.75% of the total global GDP”

2. Why is selling to the public sector so challenging?

“The implications of a new government determined to significantly reduce government spending are massive, but this drive to cut costs also represents an outstanding opportunity for technology vendors to demonstrate options for driving operational efficiency and effectiveness. The baseline objective of any supplier should be to demonstrate an ability to deliver savings in the order of 25-30%, either on previous contracts or as process savings. Do this, and they will be ideally positioning IT as a force of innovation as well as equipping public sector workforces for future challenges.”

3. What is the experience of procurement client side?

“Most business cases brought before the public sector collapse because they do not help address the ‘big game’ — the immediate and urgent need to find ways of taking massive amounts of spend out of government operations.”

4. How can vendors best approach the public sector?

“In reality there is very little that can’t be outsourced by government — even Whitehall policy work can be outsourced! — and if public sector management have the ambition and vision to follow a more ambitious outsourcing policy there is estimated a further £100-150 billion of services that could be run by the private sector.”

We’re just finalising the details for the next Sales & Marketing Forum (pencil 11 May into your diaries, and see details here of the previous session), focusing on what it will take to be a successful supplier to the public sector over the next few years.

So it was interesting to hear ‘File on 4′ this evening on Radio 4 – a neat example of how political necessity may affect IT suppliers to the public sector. Listen again to the programme here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00r0vxg – it covers high profile issues with projects in the Rural Payments Agency, Fire Brigade and (of course) the NHS, asking whether a new government should scrap these projects and define new ones in a very different way. Whether or not all the claims are justified, it certainly highlights a feeling that exists in political debates and general public opinion.

Suppliers are up against some strong external prejudices and preconceptions (based on headlines like the average cost per year of 100 Accenture employees on one project being £200,000 each) – as well as the likelihood of new buyer priorities and strategies after May. It’s going to be very interesting to hear expert views on what this means for supplier sales & marketing strategies. I’ll update more on the Forum as soon as we have the details.