It pays to start early if you're tracking Federal agency ICT procurement plans. Intermedium's analysis of Federal agency ICT procurement plans shows that a high proportion of opportunities are intended for the first quarter of the financial year. It suggests that suppliers need to know what's in the current plans (for the 2007-08 financial year) now!
In the procurement plans published in July 2006, 54% of ICT projects were listed to go to the market during the first quarter of the financial year, with a further 24% listed for Q2.
Did agency performance match these plans? In 2006-07, Intermedium tracked 98 procurement opportunities that went to open tender. We matched the time frames for the tenders against the “procurement windows” published in the agency procurement plans and found:
- 4% went to market before the procurement window
- 50% went to market within the procurement window
- 20% went to market within one month of the procurement window
- 19% within the four months of the procurement window
More than 70% of these procurement opportunities went to tender within one month and about three quarters within four months of the published “procurement window”. These results highlight the value of the procurement plans and of scout IT in forecasting the likely timing of procurement opportunities.
The results also indicate the extent to which the Federal Government budget cycle drives agency procurement. With funding assured from the beginning of the financial year, agency buyers are often keen to get going with procurement projects, hence the concentration of opportunities in the first quarter.
Intermedium expects that this trend will continue in the current financial year.