The Digital Marketplace Contenders, 12: CIPHR, Marlow

In the latest in our series looking at small, promising new entrants to the UK public sector tech supply chain, we meet HR software firm CIPHR in the shape of its Head of Account Management, Rob Oehlers

Tell us about your company and its value proposition, please, Rob.

CIPHR is a leading UK provider of HR software as a service, delivering innovative HR systems designed to meet the needs of private and public sector organisations. Covering the complete employee lifecycle, our solutions offer people management, payroll, absence, training and development, job and pay recording and modelling, recruitment, onboarding, reporting and analytics: accessible anytime, anywhere delivered from our UK data centres.

Thanks. So why did you enter onto the G-Cloud/The Digital Marketplace? What did you expect to get out of it? And did you?

Acutely aware of the challenges being faced by UK public sector organisations to reduce cost and find efficiency savings, CIPHR provides cost effective people management solutions to help organisations across the public sector deliver excellent services. Our cloud-based solutions support agile and mobile working, while rapid deployment and highly configurable features will further empower individuals and organisations in achieving the government’s drive towards digital transformation.

As a UK national supplier, with a well-established presence within the public and not-for-profit sectors, 2015 saw us secure a significant order from the Judicial Office through our partners BrambleHub via G-Cloud 6 - and as a result, we are keen to raise our profile and develop further opportunities across the public sector in our own right.

It is still early days and there is still plenty to do in order to generate the increased levels of business we are hoping for, but the early signs are very promising, and we have experienced an increased level of engagement across many organisations.

How did you find the process of applying?

We had previously been successful in applying for G-Cloud 4, but found the process complex and lengthy and it didn’t always fit with the way in which we described our solutions and structured our pricing and documentation. We missed out on our G-Cloud 6 submission, and decided to partner with Advice Cloud to ensure we were successful for G-Cloud 7. The advice and assistance we received from the Advice Cloud team was invaluable and CIPHR has continued to work with them as a result.

How have things been working out for you on the The Digital Marketplace?

We have had a few direct enquiries and have been working with a number of our existing customers to migrate them from direct agreements with us, to a G-Cloud 7 agreement. We are continuing to develop our marketing momentum and are engaging with numerous organisations and potential partners in order to nurture and grow our contacts and awareness of opportunities.

But I would say suppliers need to be clear that a place in the marketplace does not guarantee business! You just can’t sit back and expect a flood of enquiries - you still need to develop relationships and be aware of what is happening in the public sector space.

Great. Based on your experience, do you have any top tips for other (smaller) suppliers on how to make the most of the G-Cloud opportunity?

G-Cloud makes it easier for public sector bodies to find, research and procure software and services. That said, suppliers still need to invest significant amounts of time and effort in understanding and researching opportunities, whilst developing relationships in order to demonstrate they have a solution that meets requirements and delivers value for money. If you can get that right, then there are opportunities to be had.

Thanks, interesting. Any other thoughts about what you see as the future for cloud as a delivery mechanism for UK public services?

Cloud as an enabling technology is increasingly evident in every aspect of our lives. Any organisation that fails to recognise that, public or private sector, will get left behind and find it extremely difficult to compete, whether that’s within their industry space, competing for top talent, or in improving efficiency.

In an ever more mobile and flexible work environment, cloud technologies are vital in providing people with the information when they need it and in a format they can easily consume; be that laptop, tablet, smart phone or other portable devices. CIPHR’s people solutions enable organisations to empower their workforce and the people they interact with to simplify workflow, automate processes as much as possible and through smarter integrations, avoid duplicate data entry and ensure access to real time data.

Thanks, Rob - and good luck on G-Cloud 7!

To find out more about this G-Cloud-7 Digital Contender, go here

We are looking for other companies entering the Digital Marketplace, and would love to feature your experiences in this new on-going editorial series. Please get in touch with us here to kick start that process.

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