Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2017-10-21
Buyer: Intellectual Propery Office
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 48000000 | 72000000

Technical requirements: Υπηρεσίες τεχνολογίας των πληροφοριών: παροχή συμβουλών, ανάπτυξη λογισμικού, Διαδίκτυο και υποστήριξη
The IPO is currently in the process of looking to digitally transform its Patent business services. To inform us on how we may best do this, we are looking to undertake an early market engagement exercise whereby we will firstly give suppliers an overview of what we will potentially be procuring and secondly, to request further information from suppliers that illustrates the solutions and capabilities they have to meet our requirements.
We anticipate the above exercise will not only allow suppliers to be better placed to respond to our requirements in the event that we undertake a procurement exercise, but will also allow the IPO to better understand what solutions and supplier capabilities exist within the market place and allow us to better define the most appropriate procurement approach.
We are undertaking the above by giving suppliers the opportunity to respond to a Request for Information (RFI). Suppliers can view this RFI at — https://procontract.due-north.com/Register
The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is undertaking a large portfolio of work to digitally enable all of its services. This portfolio is called TRIPOD (Transforming the IPO Digitally), and it is currently looking for agile capability partners to provide specific types of skills and services to deliver the digital services for customers.
The Patents Transformation Project (PTP) was initiated to create new digital services for patents customers and to deliver a new digital back-office solution for staff to transform the way they process both paper and electronic requests as they are received by the Patents Division within the IPO. The solution will replace most of the IPO's current legacy systems.
To deliver this digital transformation, the IPO is looking to procure commodity based ‘off the shelf’ product(s) with a high configuration/low code requirement as a way of transforming the patents business. For example Software as a Service (SaaS) case management systems.
The IPO is currently finalising its functional and non-functional requirements which will enable the transformation of the patents business. These will then be reviewed in conjunction with the information received in response to this PIN/RFI to determine the most appropriate route to market to procure the solutions and services it requires, and how best to structure our requirements.
The IPO is looking to undertake a pre-market engagement exercise and offering suppliers the opportunity to provide information via an RFI that will illustrate how they may potentially be able to meet IPO requirements.
If suppliers wish to respond to this RFI they may do so by accessing the relevant documentation and instructions for submission via the IPO's ‘e’ procurement portal at — https://procontract.due-north.com/Register
As per the above this notice is for prior information purposes only and should NOT be considered as a call for tenders or formal proposals that will potentially lead to the award of contracts.