​​Online Panel Directory

Duration: 5:46

A quick introduction of construction consultancy services, or CCS as we refer to it. CCS is a contract category within the All-of-Government Professional Services portfolio. Other categories in this portfolio include consultancy services, external legal, external recruitment, media and property consultancy.

I will provide an update on the contract term renewal and administration fee, also referred to as the admin fee, towards the end of this webinar. In order to effectively manage the panel and improve the search and filter user experience for government agencies, we have set up the provider listing on the dynamic database tool called Online Panel Directory or OPD.

Hope you have all received the login tokens and made initial updates to your supplier listings. If not, or if you have any quick queries on those tokens, please reach out to us after this webinar and we will set a date and time to talk you through it.

So to start with what is OPD? OPD is a dynamic directory website that helps agencies to search, find and shortlist specialist providers who have joined an All-of-Government contract when conducting procurement activities. For providers and businesses in the market it is your shop window to New Zealand government agencies and other facilities such as schools, hospitals and correction facilities to name a few.

And why is the OPD important for you? As a provider of business in the market, this is an opportunity for you to improve your visibility and showcase your service offerings to agencies.

It is also your opportunity to pitch to agencies in the primary procurement process, while they are searching and filtering for providers within their procurement needs. It also provides you with the opportunity to list experience, accreditations and certifications pertaining to your business.

And it also helps you highlight your approach to broader outcomes and sustainability. I will talk a bit more about this in a moment. Lastly, it allows you to keep your profiles updated and relevant.

And I would like to emphasise on this as it's really important and critical. Keeping your profiles updated with current skills, capabilities and capacities will provide agencies with the most recent information about your business.

Moving to broader outcomes. Broader outcomes are a brief set of secondary benefits - are a set of secondary benefits: social, cultural, natural and economic, that can be planned for and delivered through procurement projects.

The key government priority areas here include: increasing access to all New Zealand businesses; construction sector skills and trainings; reducing carbon emissions and waste; and, improving conditions to all New Zealand workers.

Broader outcomes have become increasingly significant and relevant in public sector procurement, with weightings going up to 20 per cent in some cases as government agencies continue to apply the lens of climate change and social inequity to projects.

It is important that while updating your profile, and within your business service offerings, you view broader outcomes as more than a line item and integrate them in your experience offerings, capabilities and case examples. Showcase innovative approaches in stakeholder engagement, design, delivery and reporting.

Look for areas where your business offerings align with the needs of government agencies and for opportunities where these can be integrated in your service offerings. It also creates a unique selling point for you as a business and also helps you in the business development process.

And most importantly, it develops trust and long term relationship with government agencies and other stakeholders such as community groups, iwi groups and mana whenua.

We know that you're all doing amazing, great things in broader outcomes and sustainability such as place-based and mana whenua engagement contributing to local economy; approaches in design such as circular economy, green buildings, living buildings; innovation in zero-carbon approaches including wood and timber design; integrated project management approaches; and, project-based approaches to mental health and wellbeing to name a few.

Use this as a platform to talk about it, share your experience and highlight why you are the specialist broader outcomes provider that agencies could look to procure in projects and what makes you the right fit for them in this space.

It is critical that while completing the supply listing on OPD for broader outcomes, and for sustainability, you demonstrate in a clear and concise manner as to how you've worked with clients on broader outcomes including planning, delivery, measurement and reporting.

One such micro framework that you can look to use to shape your briefing is called SMARTER, which allows for specific, measurable, relevant, time-bound, ethical and recorded themes in your profiles.

It is also important that you take a collaborative approach with agencies in identifying broader outcomes opportunity areas, especially in projects of large scale and value. You can use the micro framework of SMARTER to shape your responses to other parts in the profile as well.

In order to further support you in this process, we will publish the professional services broader outcomes frameworks and toolkit in September and on our New Zealand Government Procurement website.

Duration: 7:12

Now we'll see how OPD profile looks like for agency users. For this presentation, we have highlighted specific fields we would like to discuss. Now let's move on to the next slide.

So let's begin with box number one at the top of the slide. Here agencies can see your trading name and legal name. These are noneditable fields. But if for any reasons you need any changes here, just reach out to us directly to our AoG professional inbox and we will help you with this. Now let's turn our attention to box number two on the right.

Here agencies can see your primary contact details. When you update your profile, please provide name, phone and email of your primary contact for the panel. Agencies will contact this person for queries or to send RFP information. Now at the bottom of box two your main office location is displayed.

Here you can enter office address for your business or head office if you have multiple locations around the country. Next, let's look at the area highlighted in blue on the left. These are your rates. This is not an editable field again. So if you believe that any changes here are required, again reach out to us directly and we will discuss options with you. But keep in mind that Online Panel Directory displays only daily rates. So if you have hourly rates, submit them multiplied by eight. Now let's move on to the next slide.

Here we will first focus on your main pitch section highlighted by box three. 'Why us' is a field to tell agencies what drives your business and makes it a great partner for government and communities you live in. Try to keep content in this section between 200 to 300 words.

The focus here should be on your unique selling point and key differentiators for your business. When writing for government audience we suggest clear, logical and user-friendly voice. We recommend that you use plain, familiar language - use short sentences.

Mostly use the active voice. Mark te reo words correctly including macrons and, most importantly, communicate positively. Now moving on to box number four 'professional memberships'.

Here you can add any professional memberships that you would like agencies to be aware of. When listing professional memberships, please mention the issuing organisations, membership type and membership number.

This way agencies can easily identify them. Professional memberships can include memberships of industry organisations, professional qualifications of staff or directors, local community panels, or health and safety organisations.

And just an extra tip, if you want to add a list with dot points, draft your content in Microsoft Word first, and then copy and paste the list into the OPD editing window. Now you might also want to refer viewers to your uploaded accreditation files.

You can upload up to two accreditation files highlighted here by box five. This can include artefacts like evidence of key personnel qualifications, or company accreditation or certifications or as mentioned, evidence of professional memberships. Now moving on to the next slide.

Here we are looking at the box number six 'service description'. As in the professional memberships, you could simply provide a list of services your business supplies. Or as an alternative you can focus on just one or two core services. Provide one to two paragraph teasers and refer viewers to one of the case studies that you can also upload to your profile.

Now moving on to box number seven with 'value added services'. Just like in the previous section, you can simply provide a list of value added services your business supplies. This list can include things like access to software, or technology, such as CAD or building information modelling software, or access to innovative processes capability or materials or maybe skills training for agency staff, or access to collaboration space for the project team. And again, you can just provide - you can just focus, on one or two core services. Provide one to two paragraph teasers and refer viewers to one of the case studies.

Now next field that's highlighted by box number eight is 'apporach to broader outcomes'. Jas has already covered this part of the profile. But I will just add that if you're new to government and broader outcomes, it's okay to start small and expand. If you're looking for business in a specific region, a great place to start is with the local councils. You can look up if they have published any supplier guide relating to broader outcomes and progressive procurement and that will help you to understand their focus areas.

Now finally we reach box number nine for 'sustainability experience'. If your business has expertise, company policies, or experience in sustainable practice, this is the place to tell us.

Now if you have any questions about any of the fields that I just covered, please pop them in the chat box and we will look at them at the end.

Duration: 11:18

Morning everyone. Tēnā koutou katoa. Ko James Webster toku ingoa. Kei New Zealand Government Procurement ahau e mahi ana.

My name is James Webster and my role is as a Product Manager is fairly new to the branch but I live within the Business Systems team in Enabling Services.

Our team help New Zealand Government Procurement to build and support digital systems used by the branch providers and purchasers in the wider public sector. Some of these systems include the New Zealand Government Procurement website, GETS, the Online Panel Directory, Hīkina, which is our learning management system, and a conflict of interest tool just to name a few.

The team goals are to build digital tools that reduce barriers for businesses by providing intuitive experiences and access to relevant and timely information, enhance the efficiency and effectiveness and transparency of government procurement processes by improving our existing systems and introducing new ones.

And to provide a data framework that improves access to the quality data and allows us to generate meaningful insights and demonstrate progress.

Now Jas and Nataliya have taken you through the type of content that will help you stand out to agencies. I'm going to provide you with some simple editing tips for your provider profile and give you a quick insight into what agencies users see and how they navigate the directory.

As mentioned OPD is primarily a directory application, however, is part of a secondary procurement activity that allows us to connect agencies with potential users. Much like your company website, LinkedIn, Facebook or other online profiles you use to advertise your business, keeping content concise, fresh, and providing evidence to back up your value propositions is really important. So content is king (or queen if you ask the Nataliya), for agencies to help refine results and identify key fit criteria with providers, and for providers to be visible and increase the opportunities to win business. So let's take a look at editing your content using the sample profile we've created. As a need to navigate around, I'm just going to turn my camera off for now so we can all focus on the content.

Please note this is a sample profile and it's in our user testing environment so you won't be able to find it online. However, all of the editing tips included in the profile are in our provider guide fourth edition. So once you've logged in, you can hit the edit button will appear in the contact information block on the right hand column. When you click that button, the website will allow you to edit certain information.

As Nataliya mentioned before there are some sections of the profile you cannot edit such as your daily rates and company name without our intervention. So first, let's take a look at file uploads. This is where you can upload artefacts such as your case studies, certifications and accreditation.

Now, we do have a minor bug in the file upload mechanism at the moment which will be fixed in an upcoming maintenance release. And the issue happens when you try to upload a file without following these steps. So before each file upload, please save any changes you've made to the profile, then select 'edit' again to reveal the upload functions. Then you can simply drag and drop a file from your desktop into the appropriate upload box. In this case, we're replacing a case study.

Once you've done that, the system will show you and you can click 'save' to save that profile. And if you repeat those steps for each document, you shouldn't have a problem. Please reach out to us for help if you do. Case studies and certification documents are a great way to expand on the value of your profile.

You can tease out information in your content as Nataliya mentioned and refer a more detailed information in the case studies, brochures, accreditations.

I do want to talk about document accessibility. I can't stress the point enough that all documents that you upload must be accessible. This means that users with visual impairment, colour brightness and other needs can also get value from your content simply via good formatting or the use of screen readers or other accessibility tools. You can find a wealth of information about accessibility online and our provider guide has links to the www.digital.govt.nz website that has some great guidance.

Now let's take you through some of the other features in your provider profile. There you can promote your brand on your profile by uploading your company logo, preferably a JPEG, PNG or SVG file format with a maximum file size of 20 megabytes. As with documents you can simply drag and drop your logo into the upload box to add it to your profile. We move down the profile, we can come to sub service disciplines. You will have seen these or set these when you apply to join the panel. This is a picklist that you can select one or more disciplines.

Please note, you can use the scroll bar to uncover more options in the interface. These will end up displaying below your company name at the top of your profile. What they are is they provide some metadata for the search function agencies used to focus in on specialist skills. I know it is tempting to pick all of them, and it does but it doesn't help agencies to focus their searches so stick to a few that really represent what your business can do.

In the contact details you can use a generic email address such as sales.yourdomain.nz, however, when you're providing contact details, make sure those inquiries are directed to a team or team member that knows the contract and is ready to help.

Again, with your website address, you could put your main website address www.yourdomain.nz, however, there's no reason you can't provide a focused landing page that supports and enhances your profile so e.g. yourdomain.nz/governmentsolutions that talks in more detail about your services, features, benefits and experience with government clients. As the size is also important, you select this with a drop down list.

Remember agencies aren't all big ministries looking for national providers. They include the wider public sector, and they can be looking for a local small business to work with them in a particular town or region. This filter will help your profile matching the right size for users. Regional reach, you can select one or more of these using the checkboxes. This is where you're prepared to or want to provide services or may have local support. You don't have to be nationwide again but say if you're in Napier and primarily provide services to the Hawke's Bay region this will help users again to refine their search results and get a right size fit. Office locations - so this is where you have bricks and mortar or a physical presence, office or depot. Again, you can select as many of these as you want with the checkboxes. But again, agencies are using it to refine search results so only click regions where you actually have a presence.

So now provide a quick overview of the process from an agency perspective. Like you agencies also have to provide authenticated access and this is limited to users in procurement roles. They can only see profiles of panels that they've joined and are mandated to use the panel once they've joined the contract.

Whole agencies sometimes use OPD like a Rolodex for contact information, the application has some mechanisms to keep things fair for providers. For example, the initial panel results they're presented, when they are in small groups, are randomised per session and are in no particular sorting order. For example, a business like A1 Aaronson Limited isn't going to be the first result each time in the log in because they're in no particular order.

As you can see OPD allows agencies to select a panel appropriate to the service they are wanting. And then they can conduct keyword search and or use filtering mechanisms to narrow their search results. There can be hundreds of providers on a panel and may only need to shortlist three to five depending on the overall value of the work. Though based on a filtering criteria that they've applied, the agency can then begin to build a shortlist in the website of profiles that meet their needs.

So we talk about content is king so let's look at a small shortlist I created earlier. When they user views the shortlist they're presented with a summary of profiles they selected side by side and they can compare key attributes. We have redacted a lot of info for privacy here, however, I think you can see how even the top line content of the third provider is already standing out and providing points of conversion such as a website URL to tempt the agency user to click through.

So the last feature we'll talk about on this page is the export shortlist. So agencies use this function to export profile information that they've reviewed in the shortlist. And they can look at that with other managers or team members involved in the procurement. And they do have a limit there of up to twenty profiles they can export at one time.

Excellent. So let's review some of those top tips. We want to focus on our core competencies and service areas, profile artefacts must be accessible, use a framework like SMARTER to craft your content, link to a landing page that supports your profile, review and update your profile content regularly. Don't forget all the information we've talked about is in the fourth ddition of our provider guide and that's available on our website, and includes detail and links mentioned in our content today.

The team will send out a link to everyone at the conclusion of today's session. Finally, can I add the information presented today is not just valuable in context to OPD but when you're presenting to government in any format.

Effective communication, especially in relation to broader outcomes and sustainability, they are at the top of priorities across the entire public sector, are crucial to winning business and building a long standing relationship. A clear dialogue about application and innovation will help New Zealanders reap the benefits.