Engage the right expert for each step

Prospective buyers should engage ICT/product/digital and technical strategy professionals to ensure the need aligns with government strategy, isn’t being solved elsewhere and should be solved.

Stakeholder resources: Align your need with strategy

Buyers should engage an innovation procurement advisor, or a procurement professional, to help decide whether the market approach should cover the final implementation of a successful solution at scale. As more is learned during the Discover phase, innovation procurement advisors, procurement professionals, ICT professionals and service designers can help buyers to explore a range of engagement methods to include in the pathway, to narrow proposals and improve confidence in investment decisions.

Stakeholder resources: Innovation pathway

When buying innovation, a cross-functional and collaborative buying team including subject-matter experts (SMEs), will need to refine and implement the buying pathway, and approvers will need to know what to expect. Service designers can help mobilise the buying project team before procurement activity starts to align key people on objectives, roles and ways of working and to minimise conflict and delays.

Stakeholder resources: Mobilise your buying team

Defining the scope of the buying project through an outcome-focused challenge statement involves innovation scoping workshops that help the buying team and SMEs understand business needs and the end users' perspective. Service designers can help uncover the problem to be solved, the value to the end user and success criteria and measures, which then facilitate framing a challenge statement. Documenting the challenge will involve all stakeholders who need to contribute, review or approve, including SMEs and business owners.

Stakeholder resources: Scope for innovation

Because innovation buying teams don’t know the end solution, they need to engage a wide range of stakeholders and consider multiple sources to conduct iterative market research across emergent domains and categories. Stakeholders may include ICT and risk professionals, strategists, procurement and category specialists, Evaluation Committee members and both internal and external sources. If engaging directly with the market, procurement and probity advisors are recommended.

Stakeholder resources: Conduct market research

Preparing a business case or budget before solutions are narrowed down requires a staged approach. Buyers will need commitment to this innovation-friendly approach from approvers and input from a range of experts. NSW Government Business Case Guidelines cover many of the stakeholders involved in creating a business case. Stakeholders include approvers, operational owners, finance, procurement, ICT and risk specialists and service designers.

Stakeholder resources: Prepare your business case

Uncovering new information is an indicator of innovation and a key feature of innovation procurement. Iteration planning requires a broad base of stakeholder involvement and consultation. Stakeholders may include ICT and risk professionals, strategists, procurement specialists, service designers, operational owners, probity and legal advisors.

Stakeholder resources: Develop your iteration plan

Defining a challenge statement attracts a greater range of more innovative proposals from the market compared with documented specifications. A service designer can help convert a challenge statement into requirements that suppliers can respond to. Buying teams should seek input from procurement professionals, innovation specialists, risk specialists, ICT partners, enterprise architects, digital specialists and technical domain experts including cybersecurity, privacy, accessibility and AI. Probity advisors, legal representatives and approvers will need to be made aware of how outcome-based requirements might differ from specification-driven ones.

Stakeholder resources: Document outcome-focused requirements

Evaluation criteria are the bridge between the problem to be solved and the project achieving its objectives. They unite experts who determine whether a proposal addresses the problem and they underpin a defensible process for selecting one or more proposals. The same people involved in Scoping for innovation and Documenting requirements steps should be involved in defining evaluation criteria. They may include experts from the business function, ICT, procurement, commercial, risk, procurement compliance and owners of the future solution, as well as customer representatives and service designers. 

Stakeholder resources: Define evaluation criteria

An innovation buying strategy and supporting documentation draws from the insights and decisions of all preceding steps across the Discover and Plan phases. Buying teams should engage a wide range of expertise in the collaboration, making the most of their combined knowledge and experience to refine the market approach so it is best positioned to achieve the buying objectives and accurately documented. Probity and legal advisors should be engaged to review documentation. Approvers should be engaged in advance to ensure they understand any complexities, including the challenge-based requirements and multiple procurement stages.

Stakeholder resources: Document your market approach