Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2018-11-13
Buyer: British Business Bank
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 72000000 | 72200000 | 72210000: Software programming services | 72212000: Platform-specific software programming services | 72212442
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: Υπηρεσίες τεχνολογίας των πληροφοριών: παροχή συμβουλών, ανάπτυξη λογισμικού, Διαδίκτυο και υποστήριξη
The British Business Bank delivers a product to the financial markets known as the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG). This product is administered via a web portal which is currently built using code which is expensive to maintain and lacks flexibility for future development and growth.
We are therefore seeking an experienced developer to initially build a new web portal with sufficient capacity and flexibility to support the planned EFG growth and allow the Bank to develop further guarantee products and to provide support to this portal and possible other similar products/portals in the future.
The Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) programme administered by the British Business Bank has been enabling accredited lenders to provide additional debt finance to Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) since 2009. It can be used where an SME has a sound borrowing proposal that is capable of repayment of the debt but has inadequate security to meet the lender’s normal security requirements for the debt. In such a scenario, a lender can use EFG to provide the security which the SME is unable to provide for itself and in doing so, enables the SME to access funding that would otherwise be unavailable.
EFG is administered via the EFG Web Portal. lenders use the EFG Web Portal to manage the full lifecycle of their EFG lending:
6) Recording ‘in-life’ changes on the EFG Web Portal ensures the Guarantee Fee charged to the Borrower is calculated accurately and collected in a timely manner.
The current web portal has been built using a code base that is expensive and not widely available in the UK market (Ruby on Rails). The design of the existing Web Portal has been iterative and has occurred as a result of policy changes which has resulted in a complex architecture that is becoming increasingly difficult to change and maintain.
Further significant product changes are planned and we want to build a new Web Portal with sufficient capacity and flexibility to support the planned EFG growth and allow BBB to develop further guarantee products.
We want to re-architect the Web Portal to allow for future flexibility migrating to a more cost effective code base e.g. Java or .NET
To support the Bank’s business objectives, the EFG Web Portal must provide a solution that is flexible and scalable i.e. highly configurable, easy and quick to change to support rapid growth without losing sight on standardisation and cost effectiveness.
— provide ongoing BAU and development support to the Bank and the Portal for 3 years from launch of the new Portal.
A new architecture with flexibility built in by design will reduce the current operational risk and allow for future development and enhance user experience.
The Contracting Authority considers that this contract may be suitable for economic operators that are Small or Medium Enterprises (SMEs). However, any selection of tenderers will be based solely on the criteria set out for the procurement.