Category: Uncategorized

Just a quick note to let folks know we are now pre-qualified under RFQ SPO 3329 (held by the Strategic Partnerships Office of the Ministry of Technology,  Innovation and Citizens’ Services) for:

• Executive Planning and Business Advisory Services,  and
• Strategic Negotiations

Our successful qualification comes from extensive experience in the realm of large contract outsourcing, from initial opportunity identification through to negotiating and managing the contract.  Some examples of the type of work anticipated under this RFQ are outlined below.

Executive Planning and Business Advisory Services

Providing services in an advisory capacity to public sector clients involved in complex projects, particularly with respect to business process outsourcing or re-engineering initiatives.

• Providing strategic advice on major strategic deals and assisting in the identification of strategic directions and strategic portfolio alignment;
• Developing end of term assessments on major strategic deals;
• Developing comprehensive business documents for complex services, such as business cases, value assessments, stakeholder plans, accountability matrixes, acquisition plans, governance plans and transition plans;
• Conducting mid-term assessments on major strategic deals;
• Conducting benchmarking studies and best practice reviews;
• Project management experience on complex, high value initiatives;
• Facilitating workshops and delivering presentations on governance, strategic planning, relationship building, and organizational development;
• Developing change management strategies; and
• Designing and implementing governance structures

Strategic Negotiations

Negotiating in complex, multi stakeholder environments.

• Negotiation strategy development and negotiation delivery involving high value, complex services and initiatives involving multiple stakeholders;
• Development of vendor negotiation strategies at the portfolio level;
• Leading and facilitating stakeholder consultations or discussions in negotiations;
• Developing staff capacity through the provision of on the job mentoring and knowledge transfer activities related to negotiations, deal architecture, and other relevant subjects;
• Developing contract language, developing negotiation mandates, and providing advice to affected stakeholders;
• Determining procurement and negotiation risks and developing mitigation strategies;
• Partnering with deal leads and leading negotiating teams, including liaising with legal counsel under the direction of deal lead, and subject matter experts to successfully achieve negotiation mandates across multiple vendors; and
• Direct subject matter experts, including financial modellers, on financial business cases, modelling, and frameworks to support negotiations

Under the terms of this RFQ, any Broader Public Sector client can request a “mini-RFP” for these services and we will be invited to bid on it.  The contact for this process is Morgan Beach in the Strategic Partnerships Office – morgan.beach@gov.bc.ca

As always, we can also be hired directly without procurement for small engagements under $25,000.  Please contact us at your convenience.

As the treasurer/accountant for several non profit and charitable organizations, part of the annual budget process is to estimate how much grant revenue the group will be able to receive from various supporting organizations.

Recently, one of my organizations was successful in obtaining funding where they had been unsuccessful previously.  The board Secretary was curious to know what is was that made the submission I had prepared successful as compared to previous submissions.  It was an interesting question, and I thought it might make a good post to go through what I felt made the difference.

First a bit of context.  The executive of this organization is all new; fresh ideas and different (and yes, some conflicting…) perspectives are now being brought forward.  The best part is the mix of “old school” and new – our president is a charismatic guy who has been running all kinds of endeavors over his 60+ years.  If I had to point to the single greatest success factor, his “tell them a story with a cliffhanger ending they can’t resist” advice would be it.

If you’ve read my other posts you’ll know that I’m a fan of carefully crafting a compelling case that flows logically and clearly from start to finish.  In this particular case, I changed the perspective of the submission from “ours” to someone looking at the Society’s activities for the first time.  This created many questions to answer, background pieces to fill in, and most importantly forced me to create a compelling answer to the simple question,”why?”.

The basic data elements of the submission didn’t change, but the narrative explaining what we were doing and more importantly why we were doing it made the submission that much more compelling.  It was written in a way that was more engaging, and brought the reader on board with the whole plan.  The cliffhanger piece was to show how this project would allow us to open new avenues of access; the success of which would only be revealed in the years to come.

The final touch added was to clearly articulate what benefit the granting agency would glean from supporting our submission.  The first step was to understand what the agency wanted; this information can be gleaned from websites, advertising, strategic plans and other publicly available documents.  Armed with this information, I then picked up the phone and talked to one of the staff to confirm/adjust my understanding and allow me to tailor the submission to be a great fit.

In this case, the agency wanted public acknowledgement and to be seen as supporting a project with a clear linkage to their mandate.  The proposal included two specific, observable actions that would be taken to address the public recognition piece, and the project description was re-framed to demonstrate exactly how it fit the mandate.

The submission was accepted and approved, and the project is currently underway.  We are documenting everything and will be providing a scrapbook style document to the funders with the final closeout package.  With this success in hand, we will be returning for additional funding next cycle for a new project!