Welcome back everyone, this is a Coursera public procurement practice session for United Nation procurement. This session we're going to talk about a very important element of how to prepare to participate UN public procurement. Overall, issue with preparation is not easy, especially with online platform. It is not easy concept to follow up with overall requirement to preparing proposal and follow the procedure. My recommendation is to elicit in this lecture and then follow my recommendation to research various subject to cover in this e-learning platform. When we learned about UN public procurement, and obviously, we learn a lot about US federal and state public procurement. The principle of public procurement processes and procedure are identically similar. Obviously, each contracting authority, whether it is UN or US federal or state government, they may have their own rules and regulation, but the principle remain same especially need assessment from the beginning to the end of the contract process or phase out. When we have key question, how to prepare to participate UN public procurement? There are a number of different technical ways your company need to be prepared. First issue, what we have to prepare is conducting company analysis. Then based on that company analysis, you have to come up with a capability analysis and then you have to write capability statement. After you conduct both company analysis and also capabilities analysis, then you will have more collective information. You can make informed decision whether this particular opportunity is something that your company can participate. But not all of the public tender, ICB or business opportunity posted in UN is available for your company because you could waste a lot of time and money, actually. Only reading through notification for vision's opportunity. It sounds great. But when you go into detail of each specification and procurement information, you may say, "Well, this is not for us," therefore, you really have to skip it. This session what we are going to learn the basic technique, skill, how to get prepared, and then how to work effectively and more efficiently to prepare to participate UN public procurement. Let's have a look at what is it what we have to do. So first thing, as I said, is preparation to participate UN public procurement. Part 1: Basic, the first step is preparing your capability statement. Capability statement is not something like company profile. When UN agency ask you to send company information, a lot of company, I would say the most of them actually, sending company brochure or profile. But capability statement has very different element than company profile or English brochure or catalog. Especially when you try to send large volume or PDF version of the company capability, or actually larger volume of hyperlink, or other information package. Many instance, contracting officer in UN public procurement or any other, actually, public procurement contract officer may not want to read all of them because, A; they don't have time to read it, B; they believe there you do not know how to follow procedural way of participating in public procurement bills. You have to speak same language as what contracting officer in the contracting authority normally expect you to do because this is very different professional work, different from commercial public procurement. If you want to play the game in public procurement, you must speak the same language, same vocabulary, and the same tone message, even with some of the vocabulary. There is certain words that you have to use in order to demonstrate that you know what you're talking about in public procurement business. When it comes to prepare a capability statement, there's a number of basic steps you have to take it yourself. First step, you have to take it, as I said earlier is to prepare company analysis. What is a company analysis? Company analysis is basically conducting SWOT analysis for your company; the strengths and weaknesses, opportunity, threat. Company analysis is also a following part of all your company background and history and your technological competency, past performance, financial strengths, and all of them in a very objective manner. When you are trying to plead to someone with how good you are or how good your company, how strongly your company is, this is not going to work, because you have to be very critical, edited, fact-based analysis, otherwise you are not going to get at the end of the day, what you want. Because you have to be, number one, very objective of what you're writing and then you have to be basically very critical on all the core elements of putting company analysis together. After you putting company analysis, and you have to do what we call product analysis. Product analysis as we covered the UN supply code issue last session, when it comes to registering your business at ungm.org, whether it's a basic level or level one or level two. First thing, what you have to do, you have to find relevant UN supply code for your product and services. If you produce computer system or furniture, there's a UN supply code suitable for that particular item or even with the accounting service or professional services, there is another UN supply code. UN supply code is very important because when you want to conduct background research on which item you can sell more, to which agency, instead of typing in, descriptive awarding of computer system or desk, office or furniture, you simply put it in UN supply code, make your job a lot easier. Also when you do register on basic or level one, level two at ungm.org, you must put UN supply code. Company analysis, which follow with product analysis and then you will have UN supply code. After having these two important analysis, now you're ready to write a very basic capability statement. Let's look at some of the checklists, what you have to do. There are a number of important elements, I would say six of important factors for checklist item for basic capability statement. Number one is Introduction and Company Overview. By the way, this capability statement should not be more than two pages, A4 not more than two pages. Sometimes you have one-page summary if you can fit in everything, what you want to say, what you have to say to introduce your company to UN Public Procurement Contracting Officer, you may do so one page, but I would recommend you try to fit everything in two pages. So having said that, let's look at again, item by item, what information you have to put it in there. The number 1. Introduction and Company Overview. Sounds familiar? This one is what you conducted already in company analysis, you have all this information already. So all about the company. Introduction history, a brief overview of the company which based on your previous company analysis, you have to put that in. Number 2, Core Competencies and Organizational Achievements. This is what you are good at or what are your differentiator of your company, technology or service, whatever it is. Something that's unique for your company or well ahead of other competitors, leverage over other competitors. Something that you can say that unique feature of your company as a competency. Also, organization achievement mean that what have you done with your core technology or core competency. The third element is management profile. Management profile is brief, but very important because depending on who are the Program Manager of your company or CEO or company basically would be evaluated based on who is a person with a what background, what past performance is at leading the team. Because even company is a region or a size. The CEO or the Manager of the unit never done any business with a public entity at all, that will be the minus factor. So it's very important to have management profile adequately address all the requirement, what the particular requirement for public procurement in the UN procurement business opportunity. Next one is, the List of Client by Industry and Sector. What do I mean by that? You can combine actually list of the client and industry sector with list of the product and services. List of product services are pretty simply, what are your core product and service that you're offering? This is a little bit different from core competency. Core competency is a little bit different from normal list of product and services because core competency is one of the best thing, what you can do among those product and services your company is offering. You need to put that in detail, especially when you put it in the information like that. If you are offering a product for example, you need to have further party certification. For example, ISO 9000, ISO 4000, or any other UL for Technology Certificate or US FED, FDA certification for Medical Industry. When you introduce your product, you have to endorse the product with third-party certification. The list of a client by industry and sector, simple term is what we call past performance. In other words, what you did with your technology and services? Who actually bought your service? Who use your services and products in the past? What we call past performance. You have to put that in the detail of name of the company, basically, and then, name of the project, and the lengthy of contract. Basically, contract starting from January 2020, and February, or June, or whatever it is, duration of your contract. So longer the contract period, it is better off because that will demonstrate your core competency for management and then that will demonstrate also the importance of your customer evaluation. Because at the end of the day, what the contract officer want to see that you perform the contract without a fail with good evaluation factor. The last point is always you have to put it in a contact detail. Contact detail is something that people would not miss but surprisingly enough, sometimes when you do not have the checklist, you put all the information together but you miss out who the main POC, point ff contact, the telephone number, and the e-mail address, etc. So let's have a look at one by one all this element pretty quickly. Company overview, as I said earlier, you cannot come out with a very lengthy narrative. You have to be distinctive, precise and very short, but very effective. Don't say your company has been around how many years, blah blah blah, it's not going to work, but you have to give them very brief business background highlight of what your business is different from other competitors, and explain the general nature of your business. What's your role in the business sector? Whether you are the leading company from the industry, etc. Core competency again, indicate your organization achievement, discussed briefly and write about your business improvement on your products and services or to certification, ISO certification, and also it's important to highlight some of the product or technology that you can and be very proud of, something your company like flagship item, product, or services. Management again, as I said earlier, you can drop a couple of sentences there, instead of going through a very detailed narrative, you can say your management, a particular person, how many years of experience in industry. So it is the best approach when you are dealing with, for example, professional service for software development. You better have somebody from a software development work, a past performance, or industry instead of putting somebody in charge of your project and previously had no relation or no association whatsoever with the software development work. It's best with a someone with Microsoft development license, or someone did a lot of work for software development, so it is the best candidate for software development contract work. Also not only for the team leader important or CEO management, but also who are the team is also important criteria for evaluation. As I said, the client by the industry and a sector, this is very important because when you write about past performance, when you mention about the particular name and the contact details of your customer, you better be sure there are contactable in other words, there is a possibility you and procurement officer will reach out to them to ask them the question. "Hey listen, have you done any business with a company A?" Because they apply for this particular business opportunity. If they happen to say, "Well, we don't know them" or information what they provide to you and official different from what you write in the paper, that means you will miss the opportunity. Not only one, but maybe a very long time. That will be a very negative impact on your performance with UN public procurement business. The quality control, you should mention something about the quality for your product, as I said, ISO 9000, ISO 14000, HACCP, or Six Sigma, whatever it is, third party certification will help you to demonstrate your company capability for your technology, manpower internal, and the capacity to perform your contract. So in summary, in this session we've talked about how to prepare to participate, UN public procurement business, and we learn how to write company capability statement. Before you do company statement, you have to conduct a basic two level of assessment. Number 1, is company analysis followed by product analysis all the detail, what you learn, what you did it from a company. Product analysis basically will be key element of your capability statement. So this will be the very first and important step of getting into UN public procurement. In this section, we're going to talk about more specific details of how you develop business with UN. Thank you.
