The aim of BidNow is to break down barriers to public sector contracts and empower and equip SMEs to bid for and win hugely-valuable contracts, a cornerstone of the ability to achieve Levelling Up.

Tim Ward, co-founder and CEO of OPPORTUNI – the creators of BidNow – said, “If Levelling Up really is going to become a reality – all businesses, no matter where they are based or who they know – should have an equal shot at winning public sector contracts, and it is our mission to make this happen.

“Ensuring SMEs win more contracts is of vital national importance, since SMEs account for 99.9% of the UK business population and this accounts for three fifths of employment. The Prime Minister’s ambition to ‘level up’ the North of England with the rest of the country is imperative – awarding more public sector contracts to SMEs is the key to unlocking government’s levelling up challenge.

“We are determined to champion SMEs and redirect a target of £14 billion to these businesses in the next three years. Small businesses make up a huge majority of our local economy. Research shows that 63p of every pound spent in local small to medium sized businesses stays within the local economy, compared with a mere 40p for larger businesses.” added Tim.  

Sir Michael Fallon, former MP and Secretary of State for Defence, who collaborated with OPPORTUNI on a report into how improving access for SMEs to bid for public sector contracts can drive levelling up, said:

“Government is Britain’s biggest business. My former department, Defence, for example spends nearly £20 billion every year on everything from frigates and missiles to boots and trousers. Across the public sector thousands of contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds are put out to tender each month but in the past, this has not been simple or easy for SMEs to access. Large companies seemed to take the lion’s share, and then in some cases, failed to deliver.

“For challenger businesses and SMEs in particular, there’s a huge and often off-putting cost to getting onto tender lists and spending hours of precious management time filling out forms.  There have been complex EU procurement rules, designed to ensure fair play but in practice add yet more bureaucratic requirements.

“Thanks to the constructive engagement of leading advisory platforms such as OPPORTUNI, new measures and support should indeed lead to more opportunity for SMEs and new bidders across the country.”

Tim added, “BidNow is a service designed to support great businesses to win the contracts they deserve, helping aspirational businesses bid at scale for contract without the upfront financial risk. We have access to some of the world’s leading and most skilled bid writers who are experts at successful tender applications.

“This significantly reduces the element of risk for SMEs as they are effectively employing the best in the business, without any overheads”.

“We have taken all we have learnt in our careers as bid-writers and listened to our customers in order to create a service which has SME success as its primary aim”, he added.

It is thought BidNow will transform the procurement landscape for tens of thousands of businesses and boost their profits considerably. Its creators OPPORTUNI, have already helped thousands of SMEs win over £700 million worth of government contracts and is on course to redirect £225 billion worth of government spend to SMEs over the next three years.

This announcement comes as OPPORTUNI recently revealed it has acquired BidStats, the nation’s most visited tender searching website that holds over nine years’ worth of procurement data.