What is the purpose of the Glasgow Business Portal?
Following on from the success of the Commonwealth Games Business Portal the Glasgow Business Portal has been developed to continue the assistance to businesses in the city.

You can receive e-alerts when relevant opportunities are announced.

How do I find out about contracts and get the latest information?
All relevant contract opportunities will be listed on the portal. Once you have completed your Company Profile and have selected a category of opportunity, businesses will automatically receive email alerts of tender opportunities, including those that are announced by tier two suppliers and below.

I'm only a small business – will I have any chance of getting a contract?
Contracts will be available to all sizes of firms.

Can I get some advice on how to tender for contracts?
Advice is available through the Supplier Development Programme; hyperlink to Informed Referral Process

Registration and Creating a Business Profile

What is a Business Profile?
Your Business Profile, once complete, is used to match your organisation with contract opportunities.

Completing your Profile typically takes around 10 minutes.

To get started click on the link ‘Registration’. You will then be taken to the homepage for Glasgow City Council’s eTendering service.  If you have never used the service, you will firstly need to register.

To do so, click on ‘Click here to register!’ (Found below the username and password entry fields).  You will then need to agree to the Terms & Conditions of eTendering.  You can do this by clicking on the ‘I agree’ button then click ‘Continue’.

This will take you to a page which will request some basic address and contact details about you and your organisation and allow you to select a username.  Once these questions have been completed, click on save and you can begin to complete your company profile on our site to allow you to apply for tenders once your password has been issued.

Once this page is complete you must choose the Category or Categories of good/services you wish to register your business under to allow you to receive notifications about up and coming tenders in your business area. Once complete you do not need to keep registering for opportunity information this information will be retained for future use.

The Business Profile holds the following information about your organisation:
• General business information
• Quality
• Health and Safety

How do I get Business Ready?
To be Business Ready you must have addressed the 10 questions asked for within the Business Ready section. These requirements along with selecting categories are critical to you being matched to opportunities.

How do I choose a Procurement Commodity Classification?
Glasgow City Council uses  predefined categories for all Goods, Services and Works opportunities which spans across 88 broad categories e.g. Construction & Trades, Food & Water, Cleaning & janitorial supplies, Sports & Recreation Equipment Accessories and Supplies. You must choose one or more of these categories to allow you to be notified of an up and coming opportunity that has been uploaded under the same category.

Finding Opportunities

How do I search for opportunities?
Click on Opportunities and then on ‘View Opportunities on the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Business Portal’. The View Opportunities page displays a list of all opportunities by status e.g. Open, Closed, Awarded.

How do I set up email alerts?
As long as you have provided a valid email address when you register, are Business Ready and have selected a category you will receive e-mails automatically when you are matched to an opportunity, there is no requirement for you do anything further

Responding to Opportunities

What is an Opportunity?
Where an organisation has a requirement to tender for Goods, Works and Services the opportunity will describe the products and/or services that they wish to procure. All suppliers are required to complete the 10 business readiness criteria and select an appropriate category before being included in any opportunity

What is meant by Opportunity Closed Date?
The Opportunity Closed date is the date by which you must ensure that you have registered and that your are fully compliant with the Business Ready criteria i.e. completed all 10 criteria questions and matched the appropriate category. You will also be required to ‘Express Your Interest’ in response to the email alert.

What happens after I respond and how do I get kept up to date?
Opportunities pass through various stages once the closing date has passed.
1) After the deadline has passed the system generates a ‘Matched’ List of suppliers i.e. all suppliers who are Business Ready and have matched against the commodity classification and have expressed their interest.
2) The Buyer will then have responsibility for creating a Short List i.e. those suppliers that they wish to progress to the next stage.
3) Those suppliers short listed will be contacted directly by the buying organisation.

Will I be able to see who has been successful for an opportunity?
Once a buying organisation has made their decision the information will be posted to the Portal to allow everyone to see the outcome of individual opportunities. Opportunities at this stage will show a status of “Awarded”

Creating an opportunity

Can anyone create an opportunity?
No, opportunities can only be created by organisations that have been awarded business at a level above. Subsequent opportunities from the successful companies can now be created as new opportunities

Definitions/Glossary

Open
This means that the opportunity is now available for Organisations to view and to express an interest in this.  Interest has to be shown before the closing date

Closed
Once the closing date has been reached, the status has to be changed to Closed and then the Opportunity will now be in the matched processes, where the Matched List is created.

Withdrawn
Opportunity can be withdrawn at any time (except if it has been AWARDED) these are not removed from the database and can still be viewed by searching for an Opportunity and checking the Status column, this will identify any Opportunity that has been withdrawn.

Matched List
This is the list that is created when a closing date has passed. All the organisations that expressed an interest in the opportunity are forwarded to the buying organisations for their consideration

Short List
This is the list of suppliers that Buyers wish to progress to the next stage. These suppliers will be contacted directly by the companies wishing to procure.

Business Ready
This is when suppliers have successfully completed all the 10 Business Ready questions when registering