Author Archives: Bramble Hub

I have worked at Bramble Hub for over 4 years, I originally joined as a Co-ordinator but am now the Tendering Team Manager.  We have a multi-skilled team here – they are all really good at what they do and we support each other at work, and have fun outside of work too.

I left my home country when I was 16 and went to Malaysia to study Computer Studies.  I then moved to Newcastle for my BSc in Business Information Technology.  After graduating, I was offered a job at an Audit company as a trainee IT support technician. After working for almost two years as a trainee I decided to move on to do something different.  I then worked for a family-owned fashion retailer in a customer facing and bookkeeping role for 3 years, before moving to Cardiff for my MBA in Finance.  In 2013 I moved to London, where I live with my family, and I feel very settled here now.

I find that all my past experience comes in very handy in my role as Tendering Team Manager at Bramble.  My role involves dealing with invitations to tender and submitting the bids.  I work with Neil and Sarah looking after tenders and contracts.  When an invitation to tender comes in we read through the requirements and work out which partner would be best suited.

One of my real strengths is my ability to make sure we stick to deadlines, as I have lots of responsibilities to deliver. My job also means I make sure I’m up to date with Information Technology – I have to be to make sure I fully understand our customer requirements.  I use my IT skills a lot, and my background in bookkeeping helps me in my role too, as it means I can make good sense of the figures and talk confidently to customers/partners about finance.  I work with the Finance team dealing with outstanding queries, purchase orders and creating quotes etc., and if there are any queries about finances, most of our partners will deal with myself or Neil our operations director. An important part of my role is making sure that all our partner queries are answered/resolved and that they are happy with the services we provide.

I am constantly developing at Bramble Hub, for example, I have recently been on a people management course, which taught me a lot and gave me more confidence in dealing with people, and approaching partners/customers. I am also always learning about new technologies through tenders.  I really enjoy my role at Bramble Hub, the team here are friendly and keen to share their knowledge, so we get to know each other and build up relationships which is really good for our partners/customers too.

The advice I would give to Bramble Hub partners would be to work hard on relationships with all the people supporting you at Bramble Hub.  The more time you spend with us, the more chances there are for us to share information and opportunities.

Sometimes a new partner works with us on their ‘first’ bid and when they don’t win they become disillusioned, but they really shouldn’t give up.  We select partners because they are really good at what they do and there are some great opportunities on the frameworks. Patience may be required – but there are good rewards for partners who do win business.

Mahri’s Linkedin profile: www.linkedin.com/in/mahrigulber/

Meet the Bramble Hub team: The Team

I joined Bramble on a temporary basis over 3 years ago when Roland Cunningham was on secondment. Now I run the tendering team, managing all the Invitations To Tender (ITT) through frameworks.  I tend to get involved with changes to T & Cs and helping partners answer what could be called ‘awkward questions’, and I’m always available to get as involved as the partners need me to be.

I started my career writing software and in 1987 I set up a business with a business partner. We were very young, we had offices in the City and we were lucky enough to secure investment from venture capitalists. It was very much a tech start-up scenario, and we were ahead of the curve in both the technology we were developing and in the way we ran the company. We didn’t really consider the risks. Looking back I realise we had very few people to give us advice or help, and most people didn’t understand what we were doing or why. Some even told us we should get ‘proper’ jobs!

Richard Archer was one of our first employees. He’d just graduated and was very fresh faced… but he seems to have done OK for himself! Then the dotcom bubble burst and 9/11 brought the business to a standstill. We had an entire year of no business, and that was really tough for us and the team. Nowadays I am very conventional and risk adverse, but the experience taught us all that it was possible to survive challenging times.

I became a consultant working for both the public sector and private companies like Capita. I enjoyed being a consultant  and was good at it, I’ve always had the ability to explain things simply. It’s a very useful talent, being able to understand what needs doing, explain how things work, and make the relationships between the ‘boxes’ and ‘arrows’ clear to the people tasked with making good decisions. What is interesting is that, all these years later, when people talk about the complex world we live in, I can clearly see how the concepts haven’t really changed, it’s just that the technology has.

For around four years I worked as an Applications Architect for Transport for London (TFL), where I gained an excellent insight into how procurement worked, seeing it from the customer’s perspective. It was also during this period that I bumped into Richard again, fortuitous since we needed someone to work on information architecture and he was the obvious choice.

During this period I also learned that whether you work in the public or private sectors it’s all about buying the right thing at the right price!

After I left my final consultancy role, I found myself kicking my heels and catching up with old contacts. One of them was Richard.  We then worked together on a really exciting project called Text Thing, a plain-text editor that reduces the cost and faff of writing, distributing and managing text in organisations. It was a brilliant experience, both developing the product and working with an international development team.

Back to my role at Bramble… Once we have reviewed a tender and think it’s worth bidding for, we work closely with Jackie and Matt to match ITT requirements to partner capabilities.  With the right partners on board we put in the tenders, and we enjoy a success rate of 1 in 3.

The team spends a lot of time managing purchase orders, putting together quotes, making changes to contracts and getting contracts signed. Fiona Harte is a valued member of our team. Her role is to reduce the risks we and our partners face, making certain contracts are both correct and fair.

Once a partner has a foot in the door with a customer, we can help them make further tenders through our frameworks.

A couple of organisations say they do a similar thing to Bramble Hub, but none of them provide the added value that we do. Our partners are very good at what they do and it’s our role to ensure they do what they are good at, and we do what we are good at! Many of our partners come to visit in person, keen to understand how we can help them through the tender process.

Because frameworks are all very different, we need really good insight into how they work. Some companies are on frameworks, which can be a huge advantage to them, but when you work with Bramble you get all the advantages without having to jump through the hoops.  Our real USP, our most powerful message, is that we find a gateway for SMEs to interact with the public sector.

I love the fact that Bramble Hub looks at things we think are interesting, things that may make a real difference to the way a business develops. At the moment we are interested in the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it could be used in future by our customers and partners, something that’s typical of the level of innovation behind our approach.

Neil’s Linkedin profile: Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/neilsimpsonlondon

Meet the Bramble Hub team: The Team