Early Engagement Supplier Days - Provision of a System to Raise Purchase Orders/Employee Expenses/Record Timekeeping

The Big Lottery Fund funds projects and activities that make communities stronger and more vibrant, and that are led by the people who live in them. We support charities, community groups, and people with great ideas - local or national, large or small. We also bring people and groups together: to share experiences, learn from each other and try new ways of working.

We are a distributor of National Lottery funding, established as a non-departmental public body by an Act of Parliament. The Big Lottery Fund is governed by a Board that is responsible for setting the Fund's long-term strategy and key policies, and making sure that it's run in an effective and efficient way. It delegates the day-to-day running of the organisation to the chief executive and her senior management team.

As part of our business objectives for 2017-18 and continuing into this financial year, we have been reviewing systems used by Finance and Procurement that form part of procure-to-pay. To date, we have completed improvements on the way colleagues in the business instruct when a requirement arises and tendered and deployed an electronic tendering portal. We are now ready to look at our purchase order system which includes record/time keeping and invoice/staff expenses payment as well as exploring other functionality that may be available within the market which could create efficiencies in the way we work.

With that being said, we would like to hold a few supplier days to enable those who responded to our early engagement and others who may been interested to come and hear more about the work we are doing around our procure-to-pay model. In addition, the Fund wishes to understand more of what modules/functionality is available with procure-to-pay type systems in order that we can go to the market at a later date with a more informed requirements document.

Our supplier days will be held on the following dates and times at our office located in Birmingham (Apex House, 3 Embassy Drive, Birmingham B15 1TR):

22nd October 2018 - 10:00am to 12:00pm 23rd October 2018 - 10:00am to 12:00pm

There will be 20 places available for each day noted above and there is a maximum of 2 places per supplier. We are limiting the number of places per supplier to assure that those interested are able to attend.

To express your interest to attend, please email procurement@biglotteryfund.org.uk with \"BIG001-1006 Supplier Day\" noted in the subject line and you provide the names, positions, telephone and email address of those attending. Unfortunately we will not be able to respond to any queries on the content of the day or similar given we wish to be transparent and afford all suppliers the opportunity to hear the information at the same time. Our intent is also to publish any presentation materials with the publication of the tender provision at a later date.