Creative industries: How to make sure you voice is heard - regardless of size

Oct 5 2009 by Anna Blackaby, Birmingham Post

One of the downsides can be in dealings with more rigidly-structured organisations, such as when trying to get a toehold into the public sector.

As smaller firms are often in the early stages of their growth, many having only been in existence for a year or two, this can cause problems when meeting the necessary criteria for pitching to local authorities.

Firms bidding for work with public bodies need to complete what is known as a pre-participation questionnaire (PPQ) which requests details about the company in order to filter them through to the next stage of the bidding process.

Ms Ward said a number of questions around how long firms had been in business were often a stumbling block for small firms.

“From my experience, I know the public sector feel they have to do this, but some of the criteria are so restrictive that you can’t even get past the first stage,” she said.

“For example, they request that you produce three years’ worth of audited accounts to show that your business is stable.

“I think that, in the current climate, that’s a very old-fashioned way of evaluating a business.

“It isn’t a very accurate way of assessing whether someone is capable of fulfilling a project and it almost discriminates against some companies who want to win those contracts to give them a chance to grow.”

Mr Eames agreed a strong selection process needed to be in place for companies trying to win business from the public sector.

But he pointed out the irony of PPQs asking businesses to demonstrate previous examples of carrying out similar work to that pitched for, when many creative firms specialise in coming up with new, innovative approaches for their clients.

He said: “I don’t want to be too negative about this and I completely understand why you have to have a system like PPQs in place.

“But having said that, the most detrimental thing in my experience with these questionnaires is if it’s a marketing-related tender or anything innovative, there is often a requirement to show you have done something like that before.

“That just encourages people to look at the same old stuff and the same old people.”