Value is a strong ingredient in any good business proposition, but when your business is connecting suppliers with public-sector buyers, practising what you preach is all the more important.
Millstream Associates is a business connecting 7,500 public purchasing authorities to more than 200,000 suppliers through an online system which sends tenders to relevant businesses depending on their products and services and their ability to deliver.
Millstream gives its suppliers a head start on the competition. Its Tenders Direct service is the market-leading tender notification service in Europe, with more than 4,000 customers who receive automatic contract opportunities by email.
For its suppliers, Tenders Direct is both a market monitoring tool and tender management facility.
Millstream aims to not only supply relevant sales leads but to ensure customers recoup their subscription by winning extra business from successful tenders.
Clients of Millstream, in its twentieth year, include the government portals of Scotland, Norway and Ireland, and the Official Journal of the European Union.
Sales Director Alastair Caithness says: "We look at both sides of the procurement process when coming to assessing 'value'. We look to constantly improve cost and efficiency in sourcing suppliers while ensuring all regulatory and legislative requirements are met.
"The value lies in providing a user-friendly service to publish notices, allowing the authority to comply with the latest EU and UK regulations, while providing a service which maximises supplier engagement and drives down the whole procurement costs.
"We want our customers to get a head start on their competitors by receiving the tender the day it is announced," says Caithness. Millstream also offers value to customers using economies of scale as its client-base grows.
"Major investment in software development means each one of our customers is set up using the same technology, which means we can service multiple customers at the same time. As we increase our customer base, the set up cost for each customer goes down."
Everything about Millstream is geared to value.