My day has just been ruined by the arrival of a framework agreement from a high spending commercial, not public sector, organiisation which wants to reduce market research spend and the number of suppliers it uses. Whilst don't disagree with their aims, the method employed by the consultants they have brought in can only be described as onerous and ridiculous. I estimate it would take up tot 5 man days to collate all the information they are requesting - some of which is frankly laughable and some of which is just unreasonable. For example, breaking down costs for "typical projects" into 20 separate elements. Do they realise how much work they are causing so many agencies and to what end? Some of the best agencies may decide that they just cannot spare the time to fill it all in. All agencies do their costings in different ways, so it is highly unlikely that they will be comparing like with like. I could carry on but I'm getting too depressed.

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I have similar concerns and have had some bad experiences, I just am not sure if it is procurements fault entirely, I suspect they know little about what we do and it is our (or our clients or both) job to explain it to them. As mentioned, I have no answers just questions at the moment....

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The involvement of management consultants in advising clients on research procurement is especially alarming. Clients assume, not unreasonably, that the consultants are offering expertise in the area, but management consultants generally know nothing at all about the research industry or the research process. An example: a client's management consultancy decided the client was spending too much on market research. The consultants claimed that the client was duplicating effort, collecting the same data over and over again. Their evidence for this? In survey after survey, the client kept asking customers' (respondents') ages, gender and social class. Makes you want to weep.

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Sorry to say guys but your clients might just using the wrong consultants. I have worked in marketing procurement for a number of years at some of the biggest spenders in the UK and have carried out Market Research Roster reviews with the internal researchers for a number of reasons. Complacency drifts into the relationship which is quite often very personal between researcher and agency which is why certain agencies follow researchers from job to job. There's nothing wrong with having an agency on board that you trust but it’s important (now more than ever) that the client is getting good research at the right price. The reason consultants have a tendency to ask for so much detail is because of the way some agencies have priced work in the past with very little transparency. I don't agree with the onerous approach but a certain level of detail is required in order to ensure the client is getting value for money. The other thing to bear in mind is that this level of scrutiny is only going to increase - so you're going to need to embrace it or continue to have these challenges....

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Dan, very glad to have someone from the otherside join the debate! What do you think research agencies should be doing to work better with procurement and visa versa?

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Hi Steve - I wasn't sure how my post would go down... If I were an agency I would look to be introducing transparency without procurement involvement and if its done right it will work across all of your clients. Procurement will then look at a roster and your agency will stand out as the one that has been proactive and will become a standard to which the other agencies will be encouraged to attain. Agencies are forever trying to distinguish themselves as leading edge in their research - well think of this in the same way (maybe with a bit less verve :)). The other thing to bear in mind is that if procurement come hunting for efficiencies and are met with a well ordered and transparent response they will go and hunt elsewhere (digital, PR etc etc)

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I speak for myself as a member of the Independent Consultants Group, though I know that several members share my opinions. My experience of trying to win market research projects in the public sector is entiely negative. This is because public sector procurement departments are tasked with selecting the best suppliers for projects but their selection criteria are not relevant to indies like me. By definition we are not employers and so we cannot tick the boxes on the Pre-Qualification Questionnaires (PQQs) which ask for our equal opportunities policy or our environmental policy and other similar requirements of employers. Nor is it reasonable to expect us to carry £5million plus of private indemnity insurance or public liabilty insurance. Thus we are autoamatically excluded from the selection process by the PQQ. This means that the public sector may frequently exclude some of the best market researchers in the country. The procurement professionals and the market research professionals need to communicate because at the moment they exist in different universes which means that the public sector does not have the oportunity to be supplied by some very talented market research professionals who happen to be independent consultants.

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I must say we hit similar issues in the public sector in our early days. Dan, what do you think about the procurement desire to have fewer agencies which leads them towards selecting larger ones? Is there a good way round this - pursuading companies that specialists are often better than generalists?

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I would be interested to know what 'transparency' means? As standard, we give total job cost broken down by field, incentives, executive, expenses (which are charged on at cost) etc. We also give day rates (although they have no relation to our costing model - if we charged on a strictly time basis we would price ourselves out of the market) if required. Are we missing a 'transparency' trick?

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Steve - I have always favoured a mixed roster with some large agencies and some smaller specialists as this gives the client the opportunity to retain 'choice' but in a way that enables the clients company to realise value. The Public Sector Procurement question is one I have little experience in so I can't comment on it. Claire - Transparency...sounds to me that you are providing a lot of that already so its just a case of bringing it together in a format that the client is looking for and I believe that will put you ahead of the competition.

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Having tendered for several projects issued through procurement departments the procedure excludes or includes potential contractors in the following order: • Is there a risk? Is the contracting company likely to be unable to complete the project? What insurance cover do they have? • What is the price? • What ideas are expressed in the proposal? If you do not get past the first hurdle (usually the PQQ) you go no further. The result is that: • The quality of the ideas/ proposal gets the lowest priority; which surely cannot be correct? • The means of evaluating risk are often spurious, particularly among small companies. Boris Johnson has publicly announced that it will be SMEs that will be the engine to lead London out of recession. It is their flexibility, creativity and ideas that will make the difference, he says. This leads to the conclusion that (and if Boris is correct) any procurement procedures that discriminate against SMEs will prolong the recession. What is without doubt is that it is ideas and creativity that make the difference, and in these worrying times that has to be pre-eminently important. Or put another way, it is a matter of urgency that the procurement process changes its evaluation priorities. Unfortunately ‘procurement’ is unlikely to be sufficiently knowledgeable to evaluate proposals on this basis.

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Good point Ed, is there a way you think we can educate procurement about the relatively low level of risk from using SME's? Most research projects are relatively short term so presume the chances of the firm not making it through are pretty small. Have you got round this yet?

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Steve, My belief is that the procurement process should restrict itself to the purchase of things such as computers or print. The tendering process for market researchers is too complicated. The requirements for numerous policies are particularly meaningless for micro companies, of which many of us are. Although Government has acknowledged the importance of SMEs within the economy this importance has not been recognised by the numerous procurement departments. Perhaps we need to be part of another Government target!

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Ed - I think you're taking this a bit too personally. I know that I and a number of my colleagues in the procurement industry are very aware of the challenges faced by SMEs but that does not mean that they should not fall under the same broad corporate processes as larger companies. I have always run pitches with the express aim of finding the best agency for that particular situation. If a large corporate business has arduous legal and financial hurdles that have to be overcome in order to work with them then these have to be taken into consideration but to believe that the quality of the proposal is not a key part in the decision (at least in the private sector) is frankly wrong! As for your comments that the procurement process should be restricted to buying computers or print, well......I'll not insult you on this blog but your comments demonstrate a lack of knowledge of what we do and perhaps you should make the same efforts that you expect procurement professionals to and take the blinkers off!

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Thanks Dan My comments are based more upon my experiences in the public sector (and you are clearly in the private sector). In the public sector if we don’t get through the Pre Qualification Questionnaire - which covers things like environmental policy, equal opportunities , diversity, health and safety, last 3 years accounts, indemnity insurance, public liability cover, references etc etc etc If the all the boxes get ticked we then get an ‘Invitation to tender’, which is when we start writing the proposal. As I said in my earlier posting this process gives the priority of selection in the following order: • Is there a risk? • What is in the proposal? In your companies case it is clearly different in that: • You probably do not invite companies to tender unless you consider that they are suited to the job in the first place (or this is your version of the PQQ). • Submissions are evaluated in their entirety – ie the quality of the ideas plus anything else that is required And this approach allows you to make whatever trade offs need to be made in your selection; this is entirely reasonable. Coincidentally of the projects that I have run in the private sector for evaluation of risk I do not think I have ever had to provide much more than a few references. From our point of view does make it all a lot easier and allows us to concentrate on the clients business needs- which must be good for all concerned.

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Why or why are (especially) public sector RFQs sent to a massive number of agencies? From an agency perspective, the chances of winning are immediately slashed which, surely dramatically reduces the interest in bidding, especially amongst the best agencies (who usually have better things to do than writing "low chance of conversion" proposals). Surely it's far better practice to do background research (web, telephone and even meeting agencies that look interesting) and then invite a small number (3-5 max) of agencies to quote.

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Hi Martin, perhaps there could be an opportunity for us to help inform the procurement industry in terms of obtaining the best outcome as opposed to the least risk. Could this be a project for the ICG?

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Ed is right. In the public sector, the PQQ system is designed to ensure that independent research consultants do not get through to the proposal stage. Projects over a certain size have to be advertised and procurement departments use the PQQs as an easy way to reduce the list. They have nothing to do with the quality or suitability of the researchers. In the private sector, you do not get the nonsense of having to review your accounts or holding absurdly high and unnecessary levels of insurance cover. They are generally free to approach whomever they want with the end buyer making the choice rather than procurement staff with no understanding of what is being bought.

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