Official UK procurement notice
Contract Management and Supplier Relationship Software
Authority: London Borough of Merton (Local council)
What is being bought
Published requirement descriptionRe: Soft Market Testing Questionnaire for Contract Management & Supplier Relationship System
The London Borough of Merton ("the Authority") is seeking to undertake a procurement exercise to procure a contract management and supplier relationship system/software to help manage contracts across the council. The system is intended to help support contract managers to performance manage contracts/services throughout the lifecycle of the contract. The system will need to enhance the contract management capabilities, and help the council to meet it legal obligations, specifically relating to Procurement Act 23.
The Authority would like to discuss the provision of Contract Management & Supplier Relationship System. There are a set of questions at the end that we request responses to.
Please note that this is NOT a call for competition.
Your duly completed questionnaire must be received by 14 January 2026 via the London Tenders Portal (procontract.due-north.com/register/ ↗). Further information is available in Section 2.
Any questionnaires received after this deadline will not be accepted. Should you have any queries regarding the process or questionnaire contents, please direct your queries to the nominated contact via the London Tenders Portal (procontract.due-north.com/register/ ↗).
About the Contract:
The London Borough of Merton currently has no dedicated contract management system in place. Officers rely on spreadsheets, Word documents, and siloed approaches, which creates inconsistency, duplication of effort, and limited visibility of contract performance. This leads to risks around compliance with the Procurement Act 2023, reduced assurance on value for money, and inefficient processes.
The Council is seeking a contract and supplier management solution to:
Ideally integrate with Merton's existing tools such as SharePoint, Nitro (eSign), E5 finance system, and Proactis. The Authority is particularly interested in digital solutions that can futureproof contract management, enhance performance monitoring, and provide assurance to senior leadership on delivery and savings.
The service objective are as follows:
- Enhance governance and compliance
- Ensure compliance with the Procurement Act 23 and the National Procurement Policy Statement
- Provide clear audit trails, approvals and transparency across the full contract lifecycle
- Standardise contract management practices across Merton.
- Improve contract performance management
- Enable real-time monitoring of supplier performance against KPIs, SLAs and social value commitments
- Dashboards and alerts to highlight risks, underperformance and opportunities
- Support proactive issue resolution and continuous improvement in supplier relationships
- Enable strategic oversight and assurance
- Provide senior leaders with visibility of contract pipeline, spend, savings and performance
- Support data-driven decision making through integrated reporting and analysis
- Enhance assurance for the council, i.e. SROs, Audit and Scrutiny Committees
- Streamline workflows and reduce manual processes
- Automate tasks such as contract renewal, variations and approval workflows
- Minimise duplication of effort and resilience on spreadsheets and siloed systems/practices
- Provide structured templates and processes for consistency
- Support integration and collaboration
- Seamlessly integrate with existing systems (SharePoint, Proactis, Nitro eSign, E5 finance system, and other systems where necessary)
- Provide collaborative tolls for Procurement, Finance, Legal and service departments
- Facilitate information sharing and joined-up working across the council
- Build Long-term capability and futureproofing
- Provide a scalable, flexible platform that can adapt to future contract management needs
- Include training, onboarding and change management support for officers
- Reduce reliance on manual interventions and build internal confidence in digital tools
- Deliver value for money
- Ensure the system represents a cost-effective investment through saving, efficiency gains and risk reduction
- Enable improved contract outcomes, stronger supplier management and better use of resources
Questions Responses
a. Please describe how your system supports end-to-end contract lifecycle management, including procurement pipeline planning, contract award, performance monitoring, and contract closure
b. How does your system support compliance with the Procurement Act 2023 and the National Procurement Policy Statement, i.e. publication of notices onto the Central Digital Platform (CDP)
c. Please outline the dashboards, KPIs, alerts, and reporting tools available in your system to support contract managers and provide assurance to senior leadership
(please provide screenshots where possible)
d. How does your solution support integration with third-party systems, such as SharePoint, Nitro (eSign), E5 finance system, Active Directory, and Proactis?
e. What functionality does your system offer for workflow automation, approvals, and document management (e.g., variation tracking, savings reports, risk logs, templates)?
f. Please explain your approach to implementation, configuration, and user training, including indicative timelines and how you support change management and adoption across council departments
g. What is your pricing model (subscription/licence, implementation, support, training
h. What experience do you have of working with other local authorities or similar public sector organisations? Please provide examples, lessons learned, and how these could be applied at Merton
i. How does your system enable supplier relationship management, such as supplier portals, performance scorecards, collaboration tools, and innovation tracking?
j. Are you currently on a framework agreement? If so, please can you name which one(s)
k. Can you confirm whether your system is hosted, and if so, please specify the hosting model and the geographic location(s) of the hosting infrastructure?
l. Please confirm whether your organisation is ISO/IEC 27001 certified?
m. Does your system support Single Sign On(SSO) or Multi Factor Authentication?
n. Please explain your support model including but not limited to
Availability
Support channels
Response and resolution SLAs
Upgrades & maintenance
Change requests
o. What accessibility standards does your system comply with (e.g., WCAG 2.2)?
CPV: Contract systems analysis and programming services · Software-related services
The lotProcurement structure
single lot · no lot value publishedPipeline intelligence · planning stage: how this market runs before the tender is published
How London Borough of Merton buys Software-related services (CPV 7226), and who usually turns up
London Borough of Merton’s own published record, next to the published market for the same work. Frameworks and DPS are kept out: they attract a different number of bids. Whole-market view: Software-related services (CPV 7226) →
How the contest usually goes
Winner shares use published awards; bid and price charts use contested lots.
i
How often small and medium firms win.
Share of awards where the winner’s size is known.
The counts under this question show how many awards have a known supplier size.
Small firms have won here. Neither number says whether you qualify; it describes who has been winning.
i
How often local firms win similar work.
Winners with a registered address in the delivery region, out of awards with a known address.
Here, local means registered in Greater London.
A local branch does not count if the registered address is elsewhere.
Most of this buyer’s recorded winners are registered in Greater London.
i
How long buyers here take to decide after bids close.
Middle value in days from the deadline to the first award notice, on competitions that published both dates.
Only decided tenders count, so slow ones still waiting are not in.
Half of these awards were announced within 91 days of the bid deadline.
i
How often work is awarded with no recorded rival.
Direct awards and tenders where every published lot count shows one bid.
Both shares are minimums: some awards have no bid count.
Thin markets produce this too; it is not proof of a tailored specification.
Direct awards or one recorded bid are common here. Check the route before spending time on a bid.
How many bids did past lots attract?
i
How many bids past lots received.
Each colour is a bid-count range. Only competed lots with a published count are included.
Past bids do not predict this tender.
1 bid22% / 0%
2–322% / 17%
4–635% / 0%
7+22% / 83%
How did awards compare with estimates?
i
Where winning prices landed against estimates.
Each colour shows awards below, close to or above the published estimate, one lot at a time.
Past prices are a guide, not a bid price.
Below estimate20% / 57%
Within ±2%40% / 25%
Above estimate40% / 18%
Assess each lot i
What past awards tell you about each lot.
See the forecast, this buyer’s earlier suppliers and firms with relevant wins.
No supplier is confirmed as a bidder.
i
What past awards tell you about each lot.
See the forecast, this buyer’s earlier suppliers and firms with relevant wins.
No supplier is confirmed as a bidder.
Open a lot for its forecast, this buyer’s previous supplier and possible competitors, from published award history, not a bid list
Lot #1CPV 7226Estimate not published
i
How many bids this lot may attract.
The forecast uses similar past competitions. The bar shows either that forecast or past bid counts; the line below says which.
Each lot shows its own forecast based on its own category; forecasts for different lots of the same notice are not comparative. The bar shows 90 past lots.
A forecast, not a list of bidders.
1 bid8%
2–332%
4–631%
7+29%
i
Where the award price may land.
The forecast uses similar awards and the buyer’s estimate. The band covers the middle half of likely prices.
No comparable awards for this lot yet.
A statistical guide from past awards, not a price to bid.
Who has supplied this buyer on similar work? i
Who has done similar work for this buyer.
Past contracts are matched by buyer, title and type of work.
A past supplier may not bid again.
i
Who has done similar work for this buyer.
Past contracts are matched by buyer, title and type of work.
A past supplier may not bid again.
No earlier contract of this buyer matches this lot on the published record.
Who could compete for this lot? i
Who could compete for this lot?
Firms with relevant past wins. On a framework, we show firms on that agreement.
None is confirmed as a bidder.
i
Who could compete for this lot?
Firms with relevant past wins. On a framework, we show firms on that agreement.
None is confirmed as a bidder.
Candidate suppliers for this notice have not been worked out yet, so this is not a verdict that nobody fits.
About this data
- Source. Official UK public procurement notices (Find a Tender), reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. New notices arrive through the day; the figures are rebuilt nightly.
- Two views, kept apart. The authority’s own track record and the wider market for the same kind of work sit side by side and are never mixed. Where the local picture is too thin, a figure widens to a broader market and says which one it used.
- Forecasts are labelled. The price forecast and its range, possible competitors and the earlier-work matches are our estimates from past awards: not published facts, not win chances and not price advice. Official notices do not say who is bidding.
- Every figure shows what it rests on. Not every notice publishes a bid count, a value or a delivery region, so each figure carries the number of records behind it, and one built on few records is marked as such. The on a figure explains it; the counting rules are in the methodology. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
Procedure terms & legal framework
From the official record- Legal basis
- UKPGA · 2023/54 Procurement Act 2023
- Procurement category
- Services
- Notice status
- Planned procurement
- Procurement threshold
- Below threshold
- Regulatory regime
- Standard
- Commercial structure
- Stand-alone contract (no framework)
- Competition type
- Competitive procedure
- GPA / WTO covered
- Unspecified in notice
- Recurring procurement
- Unspecified in notice
- First published
- 3 Dec 2025, 12:55 GMT
- Last source update
- 4 Dec 2025, 10:40 GMT
- FTS notice number
2025/S 000-079624- Latest notice
- Preliminary market engagement notice (UK2)
- Classification (CPV)
- Delivery area
- Official registry OCID
ocds-h6vhtk-05edf3Find a Tender
How it was run
Official notice- Submission deadline
- —
Timeline
3 Dec 2025 → 1 May 2026 · 3 dates- Planning notice published321 days ago3 Dec 2025, 12:55 GMT
- Market engagement278 days ago14 Jan 2026, 23:59 GMT
The London Borough of Merton ("the Authority") is conducting a soft market testing exercise to explore options for a Contract Management and Supplier Relationship System. This engagement aims to gather market intelligence, assess supplier capabilities, and inform the future procurement strategy. Please note this is not a call for competition.
Scope of Engagement:
The Authority seeks responses from suppliers with solutions that support end-to-end contract lifecycle management, compliance with the Procurement Act 2023, integration with existing systems (SharePoint, Nitro eSign, E5 finance, Proactis), and enhanced performance monitoring and reporting.
Locations and Events:
This is a virtual engagement process managed through the London Tenders Portal. No physical events are planned at this stage. All communication and submissions will be handled electronically.
- Contract starts172 days ago1 May 2026, 00:00 BST
Notice history
2 events · 2 releases on Find a Tender · since 3 Dec 2025- Preliminary market engagement notice published3 Dec 2025, 12:55 GMTUK2
- Preliminary market engagement notice published4 Dec 2025, 10:40 GMTUK2
Commercial outcome & contract awards
Pipeline notice- Awards (0)
- No award published
- Contracts (0)
- No contract published
- Bid statistics
- No aggregate bid statistics published
Contracting authority & participating public bodies
Official documents & specifications (2)
Official links; attachments are not copiedNotices published for this procedure
- Preliminary market engagement notice Preliminary market engagement notice on Find a Tender
- Preliminary market engagement notice Preliminary market engagement notice on Find a Tender