Is your company doing enough to prevent cyber-attacks?
KPMG recently surveyed Procurement Managers from multiple industries and results have shown that the majority think SME’s should be doing more to actively protect and prevent cyber-attacks.
Participants stated that they would remove suppliers if they were victim to hacking and almost all of the people surveyed say that security standards are important to them when awarding contracts.
Is your company accredited, with strong enough standards or do you believe you could be losing contracts because it is not taken seriously enough?
Read KPMG’s overview:
Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) risk being disqualified from bidding for work because of the lack of importance they are placing on looking after their valuable client data, according to a survey of procurement managers by KPMG.
A multisector KPMG survey of 175 procurement managers across the UK from organisations with over 250 employees revealed that the general consensus (70%) of procurement managers is that SMEs should be doing more to prevent cyber attacks and protect valuable client data.
The vast majority (86%) of respondents said they would consider removing an SME supplier if they were hacked and nearly all of the respondents (94%) confirmed that cyber security standards are important when awarding contracts to SME suppliers.
George Quigley, Partner in KPMG’s cyber security practice, commented: “Cyber security is not just a technical issue anymore; it has become a business critical issue for the UK’s SMEs. Larger companies are placing an increased emphasis on the cyber security of their suppliers and increasingly the onus is on SMEs to show that they are tackling this issue head on.
“Unfortunately many SME still take a blasé approach towards cyber security and mistakenly don’t see themselves as targets of cyber criminals. Unless these organisations take a more mature approach towards cyber security now, they face the risk of being frozen out of lucrative supplier contracts.”
Already two-thirds of procurement managers ask their suppliers to demonstrate cyber accreditations (ISO27001, Cyber Essentials, IASME certifications or PCI DDS) as a part of their procurement assessment, with this number likely to increase in the near future. In addition, SMEs are increasingly being asked to self-fund their own accreditations. In the absence of accreditation, two-fifths (41%) of procurement managers expect their suppliers to pay for their own accreditations and reach a certain level of cyber maturity in the near future.
George Quigley concluded: “In order for businesses to be awarded some public sector contracts they already have to demonstrate a certain level of cyber maturity and this is increasingly becoming the norm in the private sector as well. Companies are also imbedding cyber security in their supplier contracts with about half (47%) of existing contracts already stating that suppliers are contractually obliged to tell if they have been hacked. This means that if a SME supplier is breached and doesn’t deal with it appropriately, they could be looking at the termination of an existing supplier contract.
“The government is looking to increase the cyber maturity of UK businesses, with accreditations like the Cyber Essentials Scheme. We can only expect the bar to be raised higher in the coming years. There is no time like the present for SMEs to start taking the initial steps towards increasing their level of cyber maturity.”
For more expert advice, resources, and industry news, visit our Bid Hub.
Commonly confused words – Are you guilty?
In the English language, there are many words that are commonly misused and discredit our verbal and written communications so it’s important to learn the correct meaning and context.
The article below details the most commonly confused words. Are you or your colleagues guilty of misusing any of them?
Accept vs. Except
These two words sound similar but have very different meanings. Accept means to receive something willingly: “His mom accepted his explanation” or “She accepted the gift graciously.” Except signifies exclusion: “I can attend every meeting except the one next week.” To help you remember, note that both except and exclusion begin with ex.
Affect vs. Effect
To make these words even more confusing than they already are, both can be used as either a noun or a verb. Let’s start with the verbs. Affect means to influence something or someone; effect means to accomplish something. “Your job was affected by the organizational restructuring” but “These changes will be effected on Monday.” As a noun, an effect is the result of something: “The sunny weather had a huge effect on sales.” It’s almost always the right choice because the noun affect refers to an emotional state and is rarely used outside of psychological circles: “The patient’s affect was flat.”
Lie vs. Lay
We’re all pretty clear on the lie that means an untruth. It’s the other usage that trips us up. Lie also means to recline: “Why don’t you lie down and rest?” Lay requires an object: “Lay the book on the table.” Lie is something you can do by yourself, but you need an object to lay. It’s more confusing in the past tense. The past tense of lie is—you guessed it—lay: “I lay down for an hour last night.” And the past tense of lay is laid: “I laid the book on the table.”
Bring vs. Take
Bring and take both describe transporting something or someone from one place to another, but the correct usage depends on the speaker’s point of view. Somebody brings something to you, but you take it to somewhere else: “Bring me the mail, then take your shoes to your room.” Just remember, if the movement is toward you, use bring; if the movement is away from you, use take.
Ironic vs. Coincidental
A lot of people get this wrong. If you break your leg the day before a ski trip, that’s not ironic—it’s coincidental (and bad luck). Ironic has several meanings, all of which include some type of reversal of what was expected. Verbal irony is when a person says one thing but clearly means another. Situational irony is when a result is the opposite of what was expected. O. Henry was a master of situational irony. In his famous short story The Gift of the Magi, Jim sells his watch to buy combs for his wife’s hair, and she sells her hair to buy a chain for Jim’s watch. Each character sold something precious to buy a gift for the other, but those gifts were intended for what the other person sold. That is true irony. If you break your leg the day before a ski trip, that’s coincidental. If you drive up to the mountains to ski, and there was more snow back at your house, that’s ironic.
Imply vs. Infer
To imply means to suggest something without saying it outright. To infer means to draw a conclusion from what someone else implies. As a general rule, the speaker/writer implies, and the listener/reader infers.
Nauseous vs. Nauseated
Nauseous has been misused so often that the incorrect usage is accepted in some circles. Still, it’s important to note the difference. Nauseous means causing nausea; nauseated means experiencing nausea. So, if your circle includes ultra-particular grammar sticklers, never say “I’m nauseous” unless you want them to be snickering behind your back.
Comprise vs. Compose
These are two of the most commonly misused words in the English language. Comprise means to include; compose means to make up. It all comes down to parts versus the whole. When you use comprise, you put the whole first: “A soccer game comprises (includes) two halves.” When you use compose, you put the pieces first: “Fifty states compose (make up) the United States of America.”
Farther vs. Further
Farther refers to physical distance, while further describes the degree or extent of an action or situation. “I can’t run any farther,” but “I have nothing further to say.” If you can substitute “more” or “additional,” use further.
Fewer vs. Less
Use fewer when you’re referring to separate items that can be counted; use less when referring to a whole: “You have fewer dollars, but less money.”
Bringing it all together
English grammar can be tricky, and, a lot of times, the words that sound right are actually wrong. With words such as those listed above, you just have to memorize the rules so that when you are about to use them, you’ll catch yourself in the act and know for certain that you’ve written or said the right one.
To view our latest vacancies for bid and proposal professionals, follow this link. To help us connect you with a winner to add to your team, follow this link.
Concerned about the rumoured ban on contracting?
The IPSE, the UK’s Association for Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed haven’t yet been able to verify the rumoured ban on contracting that is expected to be announced in the upcoming Autumn Review.
They have however been encouraging those worried about the rumoured changes, to write to the Chancellor to express their concerns.
Contractor UK have put together a template you can download and personalise here: http://tinyurl.com/p2a9ovk
To register with us as an Associate, click here.
Proposed ban on Contracting
George Osborne is due to release his first Conservative only Autumn Statement and speculation around the statement and proposed changes for contractors have been high.
Reports have suggested that there could be a ban on contracting for more than a month.
After this time contractors would be added onto the payroll if they intended to exceed a month with the same organisation.
If there is truth in the rumours then millions of contractors in the UK could be affected, however, we will have to wait until 25th November until it is confirmed.
To register with us as an associate, click here.
Public Sector Procurement– Are you transparent enough?
Our partners at Sixfold have shared the latest news on Public Sector procurement and how they can help support your business through regulation changes.
“Like it or not, the new Public Contracts Regulations 2015 are going to make a big difference to how you bid for Public Sector contracts. Sixfold is all about how to finesse the Public Sector procurement to create a competitive edge.
Fundamental Principles for Public Sector Procurement
We have often focused on how the fundamental principles – equal treatment, proportionality and transparency – can be used as a tool to your advantage. These principles, if anything, are strengthened by the new regulations. This is particularly true of transparency, which the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) has detailed in one of its Procurement Policy Notes. It creates new opportunities and risks that will be of interest to all bid professionals.
Additional Measures
Central Government departments have been told that after 1st September 2015 they must implement additional transparency measures. Other Government departments have been recommended to follow suit.
Firstly, the procurement team is required to discuss and agree the information that will be made public when the contract is awarded, targeting information that has previously been withheld. This will extend to (and beyond):
- Your contract price and any incentives.
- The contract performance metrics and how you will manage them.
- The plans for the management of any under-performance and what will be its financial impact.
- The governance arrangements, including governance through your supply chains.
- Your resource plans
- Your service improvement plans
Of course, you might be adamant that you will not agree to the release of this information. However, ultimately it is the contracting authority who will make the final decision, irrespective of any supplier’s wishes or protestations.
Then, all this information will be uploaded to a publicly available section of the department’s website and as the contract progresses, updated so it remains current.
Prepare to think outside the box
For suppliers who are new to a contract area, this will give them a highly valuable swathe of information from which they can prepare their competitive responses. For incumbents, this represents another challenge to their ability to retain their contract at the renewal point. For the Government, this will, undoubtedly have the long term effect of lowering market prices and so don’t expect this requirement to lessen as time goes on!
If you want to know more about how all this may affect your next Public Sector bid and how you can take advantage of these changes, we would be delighted to discuss it with you.
Please give us a call on 01227 860375 and we will be very happy to help.
Visit our website for more information: www.sixfold.biz”
Peter Lobl
Training Director, Sixfold
To view our latest vacancies for bid and proposal professionals, follow this link. To help us connect you with a winner to add to your team, follow this link.
Changes to Public Sector Bidding in Scotland
Are you ready for change to Public Sector bidding in Scotland?
The Scottish government is putting in new guidelines to Public Sector procurement this week. Companies involved in Scottish Public Sector bidding will now be expected to pay employees the living wage and ban the use of zero-hours contracts.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/1331778-public-sector-bidders-will-be-expected-to-pay-workers-living-wage/
Will this affect your bidding or does your organisation already meet the requirements?
To view our latest vacancies for bid and proposal professionals, follow this link. To help us connect you with a winner to add to your team, follow this link.
Did you attend the UK APMP conference this year?
Before plans for the 2016 UK APMP conference commence, you can provide your feedback on this year’s event and ensure you get the most out of future conferences.
https://response.easyresearch.se/s.aspx?WID=1033294&Pwd=27192575&key=72652,098351
To view our latest vacancies for bid and proposal professionals, follow this link. To help us connect you with a winner to add to your team, follow this link.
Video Interviews – Are you prepared?
As Bid / Proposal teams become increasingly more dynamic, so does the recruitment of winning team members. With multiple colleagues involved in the recruitment process and often on a global scale, requests for video interviews are increasing.
While some may be uncomfortable with this at first, it has the potential to benefit the speed and convenience of the recruitment process. It does mean that in addition to the usual interview preparation, you need to consider other aspects as detailed by Nick Williams:
Preparing for Video Interviews
1) Using headsets
Regardless of whether the role you are being interviewed for involves public speaking, your voice is a powerful tool in persuading the individual to hire you. Clear, concise diction, with an agreeable tone, will be a pleasure to listen to and can help the interviewer to pay close attention to what you are saying.
Unfortunately, the microphone on your computer may make you sound tinny, quiet and add a strange timbre to your tone. This is less than ideal and could influence your interviewer’s desire to listen to your answers.
The other problem with computer microphones is that they pick up every other noise in the room, adding a soundtrack that you would rather not include. Whether it’s other people moving around, pets, noise pollution or other sounds, it can be a real distraction during the interview.
The best way to get around this is to eschew the computer microphone and instead use a headset. This will eliminate all other noises and ensure that your answers are conveyed clearly and that your voice has the opportunity to influence the interviewer as you hoped.
The other benefit to using headsets is that you will instantly appear more composed, professional and organised, rather than giving the impression that everything was put together in a rush.
2) Your user name
When you’re applying for jobs, you might think nothing about handing about your email address and user name, happy to rely on more modern means to secure a position.
But if your accounts were set up originally for non-professional purposes, don’t forget to consider the type of reaction that your name could provoke.
Ideally, you’ll want a user name or address which is your regular name, but this might not always be possible. However, having something which is rude, offensive or just unprofessional will create an instant opinion which isn’t favourable.
If your existing account isn’t suitable for use with a prospective employer, consider either changing the name or setting up a brand new one for the purposes of recruitment.
3) Screen sharing
A lot depends on the job that you’re applying for but there may be an opportunity for you and the interviewer to screen share so that you can demonstrate some practical skills.
This can be the perfect opportunity to showcase what you really know but make sure you’re aware of everything that they can see. This means that if you’ve been googling to check facts that you claimed to already know, you could blow your chances of getting a job.
Having other chat windows open is also an extremely bad idea, even if you haven’t been using them during the interview. There’s always the chance that a friend or acquaintance could pop up and make a derogatory comment or remark during the interview.
4) Transmission delay
There’s nothing worse than mistiming your comments and either sat listening to a stony silence or constantly talking over the person who is trying to interview you.
It’s especially important to demonstrate an ease with technology if the role could potentially involve the use of computers or modern methods of communication, such as video conferencing or Skype.
There’s a real art to conversing over video, and it’s not as easy as having a physical face to face discussion. You’ll need to take account of the lags or delays that the transmission might cause and ensure that you match the rhythm of your conversation to this.
5) Picture quality and position
Unlike a physical interview, you’ll have to put much more work into creating the right position when you’re being videoed.
Rather than simply pulling up a chair at an interview table, over video, it’s up to you to create the right position which is neither too close nor too far.
Don’t forget to check the results before you go live, so you can see the view that the other party will see. You shouldn’t be higher than them, looking down can make you appear arrogant and superior. By direct contrast, position your chair too low and you’ll give the impression of being meek, mild and subservient.
Once you’re sure that you’ve got the position right, do a final check for any blurs, smudges or marks on the lens. This can be very distracting for the interviewer and may mean that you come across as less than professional as a result.
To view our latest vacancies for bid and proposal professionals, follow this link. To help us connect you with a winner to add to your team, follow this link.
Vodafone win UK APMP People Development Award 2015. How did they do it?
We are very pleased to announce Vodafone as winners of the UK APMP People Development Award 2015. The award was sponsored by Bid Solutions and presented by Martin Smith to Nigel Hudson and Sarah Green who lead the Vodafone bid team.
Vodafone has designed and delivered in –house training courses and along with help from external trainers have achieved 100% success rate in APMP certifications.
Nigel Hudson explains how the team won the APMP People Development Award
As you may know, the global bid team within Vodafone Group Enterprise was established in Newbury UK in 2007 with just two bid managers and two proposal writers. I was part of this team.
The rapid growth of Vodafone’s multinational business meant that the team grew quickly, in numbers of people and breadth of responsibility.
By July 2014 the team included 220 bid and contract managers in 11 regional teams across Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific, and America.
Rather uniquely, Global Bid Managers within Vodafone are responsible for the end-to-end sales capture, bidding, presenting, negotiating and contracting of deals. Alongside the Global Client Director, they are the most senior person assigned to an opportunity. But unlike their Sales counterpart, they are accountable for all internal resources, risk management and governance for the opportunity – from qualification to contract signature.
This high growth and high-pressure environment – and rapid recruitment from a broad range of backgrounds (only 21 of the recruits had previously received any APMP training) – meant that individuals were challenged from the start to bid for and negotiate the world’s largest multinational telecoms opportunities.
As one of the original team of bid managers and the person most looked to for advice, I volunteered to share my experience and knowledge of bidding best practice with my peers. My goals were to up-skill and empower the teams so to increase the win rate and reduce the time it took to close deals. Raising motivation and increasing employees’ bandwidth would also enable Vodafone to submit more bids.
I piloted the programme within the Northern Europe bid team (24 people based in the UK) and then, after three months, took up the challenge of delivering the programme globally: designing and delivering training workshops, writing handbooks and recording training videos – all of which were shared with the regional bid teams. The advanced modules of negotiation and deal architecture were co-authored by, and delivered with, Nelson Dias of the Pricing Team. This enabled the courses to be relevant to teams broader than the bid team, and so the courses gained wide appeal. Nelson and I were supported by 9 regional training managers and 23 train-the-trainers, all of whom volunteered their help to deliver the Academy on top of their day jobs. Specific acknowledgment is given to Amy Zapettis and Margaret I’ons in the UK; David Turner in the US; Solomon Ghebreab, Oliver Kitschke and Holger Spieker in Germany; Zoltan Harsanyi in Budapest; Seon Lee in Hong Kong and Ben Ng in Singapore.
I named the training function ‘The Vodafone Bid Training Academy’ and formally launched it in July 2014. It has APMP Accreditation at its core, with APMP training and coaching delivered by Strategic Proposals (my go-to counsel for proposal-related consultancy and my strategic trainer of choice for the past 11 years). During the past 12 months, 83 people have achieved APMP Foundation, three have achieved Practitioner and one has achieved Professional. This is in addition to 357 people successfully completing the Academy’s internal programmes.
The Academy has now grown further within the ‘Sales & Commercial Operations Excellence’ function of Vodafone Group Enterprise, driving performance enhancement and best practice across all commercial and operations teams within Vodafone Group Enterprise. It now enables the professional skills development of 750 people worldwide.
To put this into context, this year my team and I will deliver 75 training workshops to over 1,000 attendees in four continents. Our activity is supported by over sixty training videos covering our core courses, and more than thirty PDF and printed handbooks, reference guides, and ‘how to’ checklists. Next year it will evolve further, utilising mobile technology to deliver app-based eLearning and on-demand podcasts and videos. The Academy will become more like an internal media channel – with me as its good looking news anchor 😉
Vanity aside, the impact of the training has been amazing: Vodafone’s enterprise win rate has increased by 13%, deal closure time has reduced by 15%, and we’re now submitting over 4,500 bids per year – that’s 29% more than last year.
Feedback from attendees is also impressive, with 100% positive feedback and 95% of them scoring the Academy “Excellent” (the remainder merely scored it “Good”). It’s a testament to two years of continual evolution of the Academy’s courses – were we often tailor them in real-time to the needs of the audience – and the benefit of having experienced coaches from within the business. It’s their dedication that makes all this possible.
On a personal note, the main benefit I’ve seen is how the courses motivate our people and give them greater confidence and empowerment. That’s where the Academy scores most: it’s a way of saying to our teams: “You’re great, and we’re going to help you to be truly brilliant.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/winner-apmp-people-development-award-2015-how-we-did-nigel-hudson
To view our latest vacancies for bid and proposal professionals, follow this link. To help us connect you with a winner to add to your team, follow this link.
APMP Foundation Level Training – 25th November, London
Keen to develop your proposal skills and enhance your personal credibility?
If so then join the thousands of proposal staff who have attained formal certification via the Association of Proposal Management Professionals. As an ATO (Approved Training Organisation), Strategic Proposals has an exemplary record in navigating people through the examination process via insightful, targeted revision training.We’ll guide you through the syllabus and the examination itself, maximising your chances of passing first time.
SPECIAL DISCOUNTED RATE FOR APMP FOUNDATION LEVEL: £455 PLUS VAT
This rate assumes candidates have an APMP membership. Candidates will also require a copy of APMP’s Proposal Guide textbook (£55 + VAT)
For full details, please contact the team on 020 8158 3952.
To find out more about bid writing courses, click here.
