Talent Shortage is the biggest growth hindering factor of the Finnish IT services industry. It slows the growth rate yearly by a staggering 25–30%.

Talent Shortage is the biggest growth hindering factor of the Finnish IT services industry. It slows the growth rate yearly by a staggering 25–30%.

Public tendering is a binary game – you either win or lose. There is no middle ground. To win, you need access to the talent that scores the highest quality and price points. You score half a point less than your competition – you’re out.

But you do not have to be the victim of the Talent Shortage. There is a way to ensure you have the best scoring team, every time. How? Keep on reading.

Talent networks are not made for public procurement projects

Companies are actively building their talent networks to fill the staffing potholes. Extending the Finnish talent market is of great importance for the industry, but in the case of most public sector projects, simply having a wide network is not enough to win bids. The challenge lies in the tight deadlines, fierce competition, ultra-specific requirements as well as the heavy paperwork that most subcontractors are unfamiliar with. In case of foreign contractors, documentation language adds an extra layer of complexity.

The missing piece: Allies public sector talent fulfilment service

So what is the recipe to win public sector projects at scale? In the quest of fixing the broken supply chain, Allies has heavily invested into learning the Finnish public procurement market by following procurement requests, mapping competition, participating in tenders, creating alliances between Finnish and foreign companies, augmenting client teams with non-Finnish talent.

It is from these experiences with our clients & talent pool that has lead us to develop the Allies Public Sector Talent Procurement Service.

How it works:

• Our client identifies a public procurement project they are interested in but lack the resources;
• Client sends procurement request to Allies with information about the missing positions;
• Allies digs deep into the procurement materials, identifies all quality requirements;
• The request with initial requirements is sent out to Allies’ 135 partner companies and freelancers, a database now exceeding 5000 talents;
• Allies does the initial selection of top candidates, composes a shortlist of teams/talents suitable for the position;
• Together with the client, Allies tender specialist selects teams/individual talent that potentially score max quality & price points;
• Together with the chosen talent, Allies Finnish-speaking tender specialist, fills the detailed requirement sheets and tender documentation;
• Client enters the bidding process with Allies as the subcontractor (voimavara alihankkija), having the best possible team available on the market at that given moment. 

How does this work in practice?

We have been using the model on an increasing number of tenders. It has proven to create value for every party starting from the public sector customer to our client — the Finnish IT company, all the way down to the coder from our vendor network.

There have been cases when we have had three days’ notice to seek for 15 cloud developers with tough requirements — and we delivered 33 suitable candidates, out of which 9 were submitted into the final offer. There have been cases where the client had to cherry-pick top team leads across Baltic leading dev companies, to place a winning bid. In all cases, our tender specialists do the hard work for both parties — the client and the talent — to create offers that win and boost the Finnish society further.

To conclude, here’s the secret checklist to win Finnish Public IT Tenders in the era of Talent Shortage:

1. As a Finnish IT Company – reach out to us.
2. Gain access to 5,000+ top pre-vetted talents from 135 Baltic and Polish companies, many of whom have experience working with/for Scandinavian enterprise & public sector customers.
3. Work with our experienced, Finnish-speaking tender specialists to complement your public procurement team and help process the highest scoring contractors into your bid.

The rest... well, it is up to the buyer. But you can rest assured that you have significantly increased your chances to win.

This resonates?

Read more:

• Report: How to increase EBITDA through staffing? The fact based view
• Finland Software & Cloud Development Services Market Report

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