Digital Growth Hub - Procurement Portal

One of the key assets of the Growth Hub service is the Business Directory, which contains listings for recognised Support Providers, as well as businesses in general. This is a key tool in ensuring that clients of the Growth Hub can be signposted to an independent and impartial collection of solution providers that might be able to help them, from which they can make their own decisions on how to proceed. However, the potential of having this database of businesses and engaged users goes beyond just search and consideration, which is why we are looking to turn the business directory into a transactional community in which Gloucestershire businesses, whether clients of the Growth Hub or not, can advertise or respond to requests for help or specific contracts, so as to provide an active platform upon which businesses can grow.

The target audience for this solution will be members of the Growth Hub business community. This will be primarily made up on Growth Hub business support clients, but the Growth Hub website is available and accessible to any Gloucestershire business that wishes to explore it. We will be actively promoting the business directory and hope to have over 10,000 businesses listed on it and interacting with it by the end of March 2022. The procurement portal will be a key feature in enabling this to happen.

Whilst the procurement platform will not be part of a business' initial interaction with the Growth Hub, we do see it as playing a key role in the later stages of their business support service as well as being the primary reason for a businesses to want to engage with the Growth Hub website once they have received all of the fully funded support available to them. We envisage users will come to recognise that the Growth Hub website as a single portal whose sole purpose is to offer a platform for growth, whether it be through support and guidance, or a forum within which business can be sought and won, whether locally or further afield.

Finally, we are keen to explore ways in which procurement can be made simpler, increasing the chances for micro and SME businesses to competitively participate in procurement activity, including removing the need to duplicate information. At the very least however, the platform must be optimised for mobile use and ideally offer real-time communication and notifications, so that users are empowered to engage with the service as when then both want and need to do.