At Commerce Decisions, we believe that adding the right expertise to procurements will help you achieve better outcomes and reach them more rapidly.

Over the past 20+ years we have gained that expertise from contributing to the development and validation of the evaluation designs of some of the most strategic procurements worldwide.

Our expertise provides you with guidance and support when you need it most, spanning the full length of the procurement process to include:

Align with strategic goals and criteria to ensure clear, effective evaluations

The requirements are a key part of any procurement and are usually well understood; however, their relationship with the competition criteria (questions) is less so. Evaluating the wrong requirements, or evaluating the requirements in the wrong way, can lead to a poor procurement outcome, where the best solution is not suitably differentiated from the rest.

We can support you with:

  • Understanding how requirements align with procurement options and strategic objectives.
  • Identifying gaps, misconceptions, or misalignments through facilitated workshops.
  • Improving articulation of what is truly needed, supporting more targeted and effective supplier responses.
  • Gaining insights from lessons learned and best practices drawn from similar projects.
  • Accessing training or guidance on writing requirements for procurement proposals.

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Enable better-informed commercial decision-making and stronger, more competitive outcomes

Untargeted market engagement is, at best, a poor use of time – and at worst, can lead to supplier complaints or formal challenges on the grounds of unfairness or unequal treatment. However, effective, well-planned early market engagement enables better-informed commercial decision-making and routinely leads to stronger, more competitive outcomes.

The Team is ready to support you with:

  • End-to-End Engagement Planning – to design and deliver market engagement that yields meaningful, actionable insights.
  • Smarter Supplier Reach – helping you broaden your market view and increase competitive options.
  • Targeted Question Design – to ensure you ask the right questions and get clear, useful responses from the market.
  • Channel Strategy – selecting the most appropriate channels to suit your engagement goals and audience.
  • Tool Enablement – deploying platforms such as online surveys, interactive webinars, and consultation tools to optimise your engagement approach.
  • Expert Market Data Analysis – identifying key trends, gaps, and opportunities from the data gathered.
  • Strategic Alignment – translating engagement findings into well-informed decisions that align your procurement strategy with supplier capability and current market conditions.

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Stand up to scrutiny and drive better outcomes

Evaluation design is where we excel. With our support you can focus on the things that will really make a difference to the outcome and ignore the things that don’t. We design robust evaluation strategies that stand up to scrutiny and drive better procurement outcomes.

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Expert recommendations to get your project off to a flying start

If you’re in the early stages of design or looking for the renewal of an ongoing procurement program and you want to eliminate risks and align project teams, then we can help.

Projects often struggle with the question of where to start and it’s not unusual for teams to be misaligned at this point. We will guide your team as you position and align on the key procurement objectives – these will serve as a reference point in the design of the procurement strategy and evaluation framework. By aligning stakeholders and your strategic objectives, you can be sure everyone is pulling together in the same direction to eliminate risk right from the outset.

The Team will work with you to understand and document your strategic objectives during the initial planning stages and craft a bespoke suite of recommendations to get your project off to a flying start.

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Develop effective criteria rapidly for a high-quality evaluation design

Understanding the complexities of criteria writing is fundamental to ensuring the best outcome for your project. Engaging our Team is an easy and effective way to add critical experience and expertise in the early stages – helping you reach your desired outcome faster.

Developing effective criteria is both an art and a science. We can enable you to complete this process more quickly, ensuring a high-quality evaluation design and confidence that it will lead to a better procurement outcome.

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Confidently navigate this extremely challenging step

Best Value is a goal every project aims to achieve, but defining it and designing a selection process that delivers the Most Advantageous Tender (MAT)/Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) – is highly complex. Every different Value for Money (VfM) formula has unique intrinsic behaviours, that will influence the style of solution that bidders are likely to tender and will determine the winning bid. Yet, often the selected formula is based upon popularity, limited knowledge or read across from other procurements.

We enable you to:

  • Navigate complex procurement design steps with expert support and confidence.
  • Deliver true VfM through robust, defensible processes.
  • Ensure your approach can withstand scrutiny and future challenge.
  • Leverage deep mathematical expertise to understand how VfM formulae behave.
  • Evaluate the pros and cons of each formula in the context of your procurement to make an informed, tailored decision.

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Avoid hidden risks, manage uncertainty and ensure robust financial assessment

Project/Programmes often rely solely on the tendered price when evaluating bids, assuming it reflects the true cost of procurement. However, this approach overlooks hidden or future costs tied to delivery risk, solution maturity, long-term viability, and operational impact. As a result, decisions made purely on upfront cost can lead to higher total cost of ownership, implementation delays, or failure to achieve desired outcomes.

Get in touch for support with:

  • Cost Approach: Guidance on cost collection and evaluation methods, including maturity and risk-based assessments.
  • Cost Scope Decisions: Support in deciding what to evaluate: tender price, whole life cost, option years.
  • Handling Uncertainty: Help in assessing unknowns like variable throughput or future volumes.
  • Template Validation: Ensure Financial Response Templates are robust, accurate, and appropriate through our verification process.
  • Gaming Risk Checks: Identify and test for potential gaming opportunities.
  • Risk Adjustment Techniques: Use advanced methods to reflect cost uncertainty and risk impacts.
  • Model Design & Validation: Develop and validate Financial Response Templates and cost evaluation frameworks.

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Maintain focus, stay compliant and align key stakeholders

During the development of a full competition construct, teams can become overly focused on process mechanics, documentation, and compliance – losing sight of the original strategic aims of the procurement. This misalignment can lead to competition outcomes that technically meet requirements but fail to deliver the intended value, impact, or long-term benefits. We conduct alignment checks to ensure your procurement activities are strategically focused, compliant, and supported by key stakeholders.

The Team can support with:

  • Strategic and Stakeholder Alignment: Ensuring sourcing goals match business priorities and have cross-functional buy-in.
  • Policy and Compliance Review: Verifying adherence to internal policies, regulatory standards, and audit readiness.
  • Scope and Requirements Validation: Confirming clarity and accuracy of service scope and deliverables.
  • Supplier and Commercial Fit: Assessing supplier suitability, risk alignment, and financial consistency with project goals.

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Ensure you’re set up to make the right decision

It is important to understand what your desired outcome would be and the reasoning for it, so you know whether you’re set up to make the right decision. And if you’re not, find out how to correct it.

Our experts will employ workshop based wargaming and a variety of highly specialised mathematical and statistical (Monte Carlo) analytic techniques to review your evaluation design at a foundational level. This will provide you with unequivocal evidence to support your decision-making in the finalisation of your Invitation.

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Get expert guidance on your procurement strategy today.