Pre procurement tasks

Prior to a procurement there are tasks that need to completed. 

The teams or organisations who might use this include:

• integrated care boards (ICBs)
• GP practices
• patient and practice users
• subject matter experts
• key internal stakeholders

You need to define your reason for starting a new procurement. This could be an event or an opportunity. It will trigger you to procure a new solution for your primary care organisations. It could include:

• national requirements, such as a new contracting vehicle
• local requirements, such as a requirement for change. These could be initiated by ICBs, stakeholders or GP practices
• regional initiatives, for example, to pursue a joint procurement. This could involve several ICBs across regions coming together
• technology replacement - required to replace existing IT when new technology becomes available

When starting a procurement for a new solution there are several things you need to consider when gathering business needs. 

It is important to become familiar with the Buying Catalogue. This tool will help you define your requirements. 

On the Buying Catalogue, you can:

• discover available contracting vehicle suppliers
  you can filter by contracting vehicle to find suitable solutions and see approved suppliers.
• browse approved solutions
  view and filter solutions that match your needs.
• understand how your finalised requirements translate into our capabilities
  the Buying Catalogue lets you filter by capabilities and functionalities (epics). Filtering will show you suitable suppliers and solutions.

We recommend working with stakeholders and GP practices to discuss their:

• requirements
• expectations of new solutions

They will be closer to what the business needs are and what functionality is needed. You may want to validate your requirements with them before formalising your requirements.

This will include timeframes for any actions, inter-dependencies, milestones, and outputs (deliverables). This can be created much earlier in the process. It is likely to need continual updating to reflect changing circumstances.

Monitor and measure progress against each requirement throughout the procurement process 

Once you have gathered and validated your requirements, it is important to use the Buying Catalogue to filter results according to your needs. When you have done this, you can save your results by creating a shortlist.

This is where you:

• clearly define your requirements
• decide how you're going to run your procurement

It is important to:

• have your detailed requirements mapped against capabilities listed in the Buying Catalogue
• determine what your evaluation criteria are

You need to determine which evaluation criteria should be applied to this procurement. This is done by reviewing the list of evaluation criteria. Each criteria have individual weightings. You can adapt these according to your procurement aims.

You must ensure that the funding used to purchase the new services is appropriate. The planned procurement process and strategy must comply with all relevant terms and conditions relating to the funding.

Please refer to your ICB for your allocated funding.

Once all the pre procurement tasks have been completed you can:

• Start collaborating with your key stakeholders to define your requirements
• Determine which capabilities you need your chosen solution to deliver
• Search for solutions and apply filters to see a suitable list of suppliers
• Document the business needs and requirements
• Decide which procurement route you need to follow