Government Relations

 

Leaderboard has on staff consultants that have spent several years working to and for Government. This experience includes policy and industry development roles at agency levels as well as direct support for Ministers with portfolios that included Transport, Power and Water and Whole of Government ICT policy.

 

Leaderboard has been listed on the Australian Government Lobbyists Register in the past and is aware of the requirements should re-listing be required.

 

Leaderboard has contacts in a number of Ministerial offices in Canberra, Brisbane and Sydney which helps facilitates access. Access to key events such as the Budget night dinner and other functions can be facilitated. Leaderboard can also host your own function in Parliament House in one of the meeting rooms or annexes adjacent to the main dining room.

 

Leaderboard can advise whether an approach to Ministers is worthwhile. It can also help in developing the key messages to be delivered as well as the desired outcomes to be sought during meetings.

RFT Responses

 

An important part of doing business in the Government is the preparation of high quality tender responses.

 

You can have the best personal and high level relationships with key personnel in the customers you are pursuing however unless your tender response scores well against the weighted evaluation criteria, you may not proceed through to the evaluation stages that follow.

 

Leaderboard can lead your tender response team through the process of truly understanding the written and unwritten or implied customer requirements and then coordinating a high quality, coherent and consistent response.

 

Responses need to be factual, defend-able, reference-able and focused on answering the questions being asked. You also need to avoid exaggerated claims and certain terms and words that will be turn-offs to the team tasked with reading the responses. Often the evaluation teams are very experienced and can see through unjustified claims very quickly.

 

They also need to look good. This means properly formatted, professionally laid out with high quality photos or graphics.

Pricing Models

 

An important component of any RFT response is the pricing.

 

Leaderboard has experience with building some of the most complex consumption-based pricing models. The pricing could be based on end user devices or virtual images, per server and server type, per storage tier, per network, voice or video devices.

 

A key part of building a pricing model is understanding the scope of the hardware and software products and services to be included behind each pricing unit.

 

The pricing model also needs to serve two purposes. One is to provide the necessary pricing for the customer. The other is to reflect the profit and loss for the whole contract at any of the internal approval stages.

 

The pricing also needs to enable flexibility. It should be assumption-based and any changes in assumptions, margins, discounts and underlying cost prices should be able to be readily adjusted so that the resultant prices, total contract value and profitability can be readily reviewed and adjusted if necessary.

 

The pricing approach also needs to be reviewed and agreed by management. While a least-cost compliant approach may have worked in the past, it is possible to be under priced where the customer can quickly work out that inadequate provision for products, maintenance or resource levels have been made.

Contract Negotiations

 

If successful in making it through the tender review, presentation and clarification stages then you will be fortunate to be invited through to the contract negotiation and finalisation stages which are the last steps before signing a contract.

 

With the larger contracts this phase may be quite a formal process where items that needed clarification are  understood, major contractual issues such as liability, insurance, intellectual property and financial security  are negotiated and agreed.

 

This phase of the process could also require further price adjustments based on due diligence that may be accommodated by the customer. Many or all of the assumptions may need to be removed and this may only be possible if further clarity surrounding some the elements that drive the pricing is obtained.

 

Ultimately the objective is to form an agreement that provides the benefits and services sought by the customer with the appropriate management of risks. The agreement also needs to be sustainable for the supplier to enable a reasonable return on investment on the costs of bidding and funding the products and resources required to deliver the services for the life of the contract and any contract extensions.