With many having services on G-Cloud adding up way into the double digits – suppliers need to ask themselves if they’re creating unnecessary work. In this blog, we’ve taken a look at why suppliers shouldn’t just copy the big companies in submitting lots of services. They should channel this effort into making fewer exceptional ones, rather than a lot of mediocre ones!
Don’t over-do it
It’s important for suppliers to work with the resources they have. Just over 5000 suppliers collectively offer around 40000 services in the G-Cloud 13 catalogue. This means that suppliers have an average of around 6-7 listings. However, not all suppliers are the same – some have 20+ listings on the framework.
Not every company will need that many G-Cloud listings. It might be considered a ‘visibility’ thing; the more listings, the more chance of appearing in searches, right? Not necessarily. A lot of services listed on G-Cloud are filterable, whether by Hosting, Support or Software or by Public and Private. It’s also important to remember that utilising keywords within a services’ features, benefits and introductory paragraph is the best way to appear in buyers’ search results.
It’s also down to how much time and resources a supplier might have. Service Definitions became mandatory from G-Cloud 12 onward. These are multiple page documents going into more depth about the service, and what buyers can expect. Every listing requires one, but they take a fair bit of time to get right. It’ll be a big task if a supplier has multiple listings, especially if resources are limited.
You can create separate G-Cloud listings for different Lots
It might be that a supplier can provide different cloud services and technology to the public sector. Don’t get us wrong, each defined solution should have its own G-Cloud listing. Contrary to what some suppliers think, and contrary to CCS informing suppliers incorrectly in 2019, a company’s services can be listed in any of the three Lots independently. So, if a supplier can provide Hosting, Support and Software? Put those as three different listings within each respective Lot.
How should I list?
Suppliers need to focus on the key services they provide to the public sector and put these into their service listings. As we said, suppliers can put their services in different Lots and make sure they’re covering the scope. However, they need to spend time looking at competitors and how they can be found in searches. After all, with the possibility of direct award if you filter as the only supplier in a buyer’s search, it’s definitely worth spending the time on.
