Why do small subcontractors resist procurement portals?

Look at it from their side

You are asking a firm with no estimator to price a BOQ online, in a browser, on a system they have never seen, against a deadline, for a job they might not win. Meanwhile the competitor who emails a PDF quote gets the same shot at it.

Add a shared company email address that three people check, a workforce that does not read English as a first language, and a working day spent on site rather than at a desk. The portal is not hard for them. It is simply not worth it — and they are right, given what you have offered them so far.

Lead with payment visibility, not tender access

This is the whole trick, and it is the thing most implementations get backwards. Tender access is a benefit to you. What the subcontractor wants is the answer to “did you get my invoice, and when am I getting paid?” — the question that currently costs them a phone call and you an interruption, every week, indefinitely.

Give them that, and they will log in. Then the tendering is something they do while they are already there. Adoption follows value; it has never once followed a mandate.

And build the bridges

Excel round-trip import, so a firm that prices in a spreadsheet can still bid. Mobile-friendly quote entry, because that is the device they have. Registration under about fifteen fields. Phone-supported onboarding for the strategic trades. And do not mandate the portal for a genuine one-off vendor supplying you once — that is how you acquire a reputation that costs you the vendors you wanted.

None of this is a concession. Every one of those bridges keeps a bidder in your pool, and a bidder in the pool is a better price on the package.

Terms

• E-Tendering