Soft Market Test Exercise for Research Information Management System and Associated Support Services

Nottingham Trent University (NTU) would like to invite suppliers to participate in a Soft Market Test exercise. We are looking to find a (Research Information Management System and Associated Support Service) solution and wish to engage in discussions prior to formulating our final procurement strategy.

This process is the beginning of our market engagement exercise designed to help us assess the maturity and depth of the marketplace, and to understand if a solution can meet the fast evolving needs of our service. This process will better inform and scope any future procurement exercise, and help interested organisations understand our requirements.

Please be aware that at this stage we will not be formally assessing proposals, and nothing given or provided at this stage will be evaluated as part of any future procurement process. We welcome responses from suppliers and companies who feel that they have positive ideas on how our vision can be delivered. Please email scott.selby@ntu.ac.uk for documentation providing further details. If you feel that your organisation is able to contribute to this exercise please complete the relevant questions from the background document and return, via email to scott.selby@ntu.ac.uk by 13.00 Friday 10th June 2016.

Following receipt of the responses, and depending on the information we obtain from this exercise, we may invite a maximum of 6 respondents to attend separate open dialogue workshop sessions to present and discuss their responses between 16th and 30th June. A decision will then be made internally on the best procurement approach to take.

Parties unable to attend a session will not be disadvantaged in any future procurement as this pre-market engagement is only an exploratory fact-finding exercise and is not an invitation to tender or a request for formal expressions of interest. Any supplier invited to present to NTU is doing so to support market research only and to help make any potential procurement process more focused and efficient and to identify the needs of sponsors. No supplier selection or supplier preference is implied