Implementation of a Business-to-Government (B2G) Sales Analytics Tool - Hermix

Abstract

The public sector sales market, i.e. Business-to-Government (B2G) market is large and relevant. It is similar, yet differs in several key aspects from other markets such as retail, consumer (B2C), or Businessto-Business (B2B). B2G is huge, at 2 trillion Euro per year in Europe, but insufficiently researched and it lacks proper tools and methods. Public contracts are difficult to access and require specialized expertise and a significant initial investment. This paper explores the implementation and evaluation of an IT platform that supports and automates public sector sales, Hermix, in a large company. This study had a qualitative longitudinal approach. It consisted of 7 workshops and 2 interviews with 8 case study participants, performed over the duration of a year. It highlights the implementation steps and results. Hermix automated a set of public sector sales processes for the host company, including: tender monitoring with email notifications, opportunity qualification, and market research, i.e. the analysis of the tactical and strategic context: buyers (public authorities), budgets, competition, partnership affinities, groups of interest, trends. It uses advanced data analytics, big-data and machine learning to provide market intelligence such as governmentgraphics, firmographics, geographics and monetary segmentation. Implementing public sector sales automation tools provides direct benefits to companies, related to: cost and time efficiency, improved proposal success rates, and strategic planning optimization. Indirect benefits for companies refer to delivery quality. Data analytics tools also support overall public procurement transparency, public spending efficiency and better public governance.