On catalogue competitions

If your budget is under £250,000, and you are not procuring a foundation system, you can carry out an on catalogue competition. It is a shorter and simpler process to compete products you have shortlisted. Using this process you do not need to:

• invite suppliers to provide written tenders
• notify unsuccessful suppliers

However, there are certain rules that you must follow. You can:

• only use information that is on the Buying Catalogue
• only speak to suppliers to confirm which services you need to include in the competition
• only negotiate prices with suppliers

The result of the competition is non-binding. You can use the process to compare products based on quality and price. As a result of the competition, you may be able to do a Direct Award.

The teams or organisations who might use this include:

• integrated care boards (ICBs)
• GP practices

This route is unlikely to be suitable for procuring foundation IT systems. We expect ICBs to run a single procurement on behalf of multiple practices, the cost of which would likely be over the £250,000 threshold for this procurement route.

Before you start preparing for a competition, there are a number of steps you need to take:

• create your shortlist using filters that match requirements identified in your business case
• save your filters
• change to a direct award if your filters returned only 1 solution
• speak to the suppliers that are shortlisted

• identify the healthcare organisations / service recipients that will be receiving the solution or service
• if the quantities are measured differently, make sure you know how many are required. For example, per license per month
• decide if you want to evaluate solutions based on price only or price and non price elements

If you are evaluating solutions based on price and non price elements:

• decide your weighting for price and non price:
  • price weighting must be 30% - 90%
  • non price weighting must be 10% - 70%
• identify which non price elements you will be evaluating from:
  • features
  • implementation
  • interoperability
  • service levels
• identify your requirements for the non price elements you will be evaluating
• decide your weightings for the non price elements you will be evaluating
• identify who will be involved in scoring the shortlisted solutions

Once you have completed all the above steps you will need to:

• complete your competition on the Buying Catalogue (follow running an on catalogue competition)
• place your order by completing the process on the Buying Catalogue