The Ministry of Defence (MoD) updated its commercial pipeline on the 30th April 2024 to give suppliers a forward look into upcoming procurement activity for all contracts valued over £2m for the next 18 months.

Overall, 443 upcoming contracts have been published across 14 different MoD departments with a total value of more than £37b. [GATE]

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For your convenience, this report outlines key learnings from the commercial pipeline update to help you:

• ‍Target relevant departments: Follow the money to see where the bulk of the MoD contracts are heading with a department analysis.
• Anticipate the top routes to market: Qualify opportunities by understanding the MoD’s procurement strategy and what frameworks to expect.
• Identify upcoming opportunities: Focus your sales effort with tactics to find contracts over and under the £2m pipeline reporting threshold.
• Engage with relevant decision makers: Build trust with procurement decision makers to win more bids.

The MoD is responsible for 14 different departments, each of which govern a different area of defence.

Below, we visualise the sum of pipeline funding allocated to each department to help you focus your sales efforts on the the biggest opportunities within this account.

From the above table, it's clear that DE&S and DIO represent the highest areas of investment for 2024/2025. However, these opportunities might not be relevant for smaller businesses.

Digging into the contracts behind the data, DE&S and DIO plan to procure only 21% of their upcoming contracts from SMEs, with most of these contracts suited for construction, munitions, and vehicle manufacturers. Large niche suppliers with historical relationships will be preferred within these departments.

For SMEs, we recommend you deprioritise DE&S and DIO. Instead, target departments like Defence Digital (DD), which primarily procures software, or the Navy which have declared 100% of their contracts being suitable for SMEs.

The MoD commercial pipeline update reveals the planned route to market for every contract valued above £2m. Below we've listed frameworks that the MoD expect to procure future contracts through published in the commercial pipeline update.

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Understanding what frameworks MoD procures through allows you to effectively plan your go-to-market strategy. With CCS frameworks leading the way, it's essential suppliers closely track frameworks emerging from this organisation.

For active frameworks you are not yet listed on, we recommend suppliers track key dates for upcoming renewals and identify potential partner suppliers already listed to maximise your chances of winning a contract.

Now you know which departments the MoD are investing in and what frameworks they are using, the next step is to identify relevant contracts you can target.

Containing all future opportunities over £2m, we've highlighted the top 5 digital contracts to demonstrate how you can use the commercial pipeline to identify potential opportunities in your industry.

For suppliers that are outside of the digital industry, take a look at the MoD commercial pipeline update to find upcoming opportunities that suit your business.

The MoD commercial pipeline update only provides visibility into contracts with an expected value above £2m. For contracts under £2m, the MoD is not required to publish a prior pipeline contract.

To anticipate upcoming opportunities below this threshold, suppliers typically use expiring contracts to indicate contracts to potentially target for renewals.

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Using the Stotles platform, customers can easily identify relevant upcoming expiries to target, based on their industry and business signals. To demonstrate the opportunities involved, we've highlighted below 5 upcoming expiries for suppliers in the IT & Software industry to consider.

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Successful defence suppliers pre-engage with procurement decision makers over renewing contracts. This allows you to showcase your product, build trust across the whole buyer organisation and gather unpublished information on the opportunity.

To demonstrate how you can use Stotles to identify relevant decision makers, below we have highlighted senior procurment decision makers in the MoD.

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The MoD commercial pipeline update allows us to understand routes to market across the 14 departments and the essential frameworks to be on to win more contracts.

This report should enable your sales teams to efficiently identify and qualify the most promising opportunities whilst using the Stotles platform to pinpoint upcoming contract renewals and what key decision makers to engage with.

This report was designed using the MoD pipeline update in tandem with Stotles data to provide suppliers with a tool to do better business with the MoD.