This news follows CEO Piers Linney taking a step back from his TV appearances on the popular BBC programme Dragons Den in order to "focus" on his core business - Outsourcery. The city has been speculating about the financial stability of the company and share holders will welcome the new contract news.
The contract coincides with the launch of the UK Government’s new Contracts Finder portal, unveiled by Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude MP; the Prime Minister’s Enterprise Adviser, Lord Young; and Outsourcery’s Co-CEO, Piers Linney. New legislation has also come into force today to reduce cash flow risks for businesses supplying the public sector and further simplify procurement.
Commenting on the deal, Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Outsourcery said: “The G-Cloud framework provides significant benefits to all public sector organisations, whether at a national or local level by enabling them to engage with innovative small and medium sized enterprises [SMEs] such as Outsourcery that may not be on existing procurement frameworks. With the launch of the revamped Contracts Finder portal, public sector opportunities will become less complicated and costly to bid for, making deals such as ours with Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust more common. The new Contracts Finder portal is a huge opportunity for SMEs to gain visibility across a wealth of public sector opportunities.”
Mark Davison, Director of IM&T at Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust comments: “Using the G-Cloud gave us access to a much broader range of suppliers that we would not have considered had we followed previous procurement approaches outside the framework. Importantly, this meant receiving tenders from a range of smaller providers who were able to be more competitive on price and flexible in the service they offered.
“The new highly resilient Microsoft Lync service will be installed across two datacentres for instant messaging, presence and audio/video conferencing, to enable collaboration across the Trust, to increase productivity and to reduce costs.”
Commenting on the new legislation that comes in to force today, Linney added: “Central Government spent an unprecedented £11.4 billion with SMEs in 2013-2014 and the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude MP, revealed new figures yesterday showing that a record 26.1% of Government spend went to SMEs. The new data shows that central Government spent 10.3% directly with SMEs, and 15.8% indirectly, which aligns with Outsourcery’s direct and partner models.
“The opportunity is significant yet finding new business opportunities in the public sector is only one part of the challenge. Many SMEs suffer cash flow pressure and business risk in the event of late payments, particularly if operating as a sub-contractor. The legislation that comes into effect today will help reduce financial pressure and hopefully encourage more SMEs to engage with the public sector opportunity as 30 day payment terms down the entire supply chain become mandatory across all public sector contracts.”