G-Cloud 12: What has changed from previous iterations?

Public sector consultancy Advice Cloud runs through the changes set for G-Cloud 12, which is set to go live later this year

Last week techUK hosted a G-Cloud 12 industry briefing alongside CCS and Advice Cloud.

Several members of Crown Commercial Service (CCS) attended, including G-Cloud category agreement manager Mark Tooke, and category lead for G-Cloud Sandra Milburn. In addition, Advice Cloud CEO Chris Farthing spoke at the event, explaining the application process and busting myths to a room full of hopeful suppliers.

Here are the key details shared at the event, to prepare you for this year's application window, which opens next week.

Changes from G-Cloud 11 to G-Cloud 12

The key changes made for this iteration of G-Cloud are as follows:

• Mandatory Service Definitions - certainly the biggest change this year.
• Digital signature process - when it comes to signing the framework agreement.
• DUNS (Data Universal Numbering System) number requirements - suppliers must have a valid one to apply, which will be automatically checked against their Companies House number.

In terms of the supplier declaration, CCS also confirmed that minimal changes will be made. However, it won't be quite as simple as a cut-and-paste job for this section, and it's important to check through each of your answers carefully. Several of them are pass/fail, after all.

CCS has prepared a log of differences between the call-off documents for GC11 and GC12. This will be available once the ITT is released, but to summarise; there are no major material changes.

Service definitions: what to include

Although CCS won't be issuing templates for the now-mandatory service definitions, they did provide some useful guidance:

• Based on CCS's own analysis, businesses that haven't won business on G-Cloud tend to also be those without service definitions. Food for thought.
• Don't make the language in service definitions too marketing-y, or too technical. Although the reader could be from a marketing or technical background, it's best to assume that they aren't. Think about accessibility here.

On that note, CCS will be publishing accessibility around creating and uploading accessible documents. For GC12, this isn't a mandatory requirement as it's very hard for CCS to police. However, the more accessible the service definition, the higher the likelihood of certain buyers reading and digesting them.

If the idea of putting together a service definition from scratch sounds alien to you, fear not. Advice Cloud has put together a service definition template for each G-Cloud Lot - exclusively available for our clients - based on our previous success on the framework and the CCS guidance released.

How intelligent is the Digital Marketplace search function?

The short answer is: not very. For example, if a buyer were looking for an e-sourcing solution, it's likely that different results would appear when searching for "e-sourcing" and "e sourcing". Therefore, it's certainly worthwhile for suppliers to include all possible descriptors for their service in their short description.

However, CCS does actively suggest to buyers that they experiment with their searches, carrying out trials to make sure that they're capturing everybody. In addition, CCS has been in contact with GDS about modernising the digital marketplace search function. Although it won't happen for GC12, watch this space.

Social value and G-Cloud: are they compatible?

This is a tricky one. It is worth nothing that there currently aren't any particular search criteria on the digital marketplace that cover social value. However, this isn't to say that it doesn't come into the G-Cloud procurement process. As noted by Sandra Milburn, social value needs to be considered on all frameworks, but is applicable to different frameworks at different levels.

For G-Cloud, a large part of the social value discussion comes in at call-off level. What's more, when buyers are setting out their MEAT (most economically advantageous tender) criteria for evaluating suppliers' offerings, non-functional characteristics tend to cover social value. Although the processes for identifying these characteristics are not as obvious as those in more competitive, capped frameworks, they still exist.

We hope this summary was useful in preparing you for the next iteration of G-Cloud. However, if you'd like to catch up with the full briefing, techUK will be releasing a full recording of the event, for members only.

Finally, to find out more about how Advice Cloud can support you with putting together the most compliant and competitive listing possible, get in touch.