entrepreneurs club

Smaller companies are the lifeblood of business, bringing agility and driving innovation, which is essential for organisations as they continue to transform at speed. Finding a good SME to partner with and partnering with them well is however difficult, no matter the size of organisation. For this reason, the GSA has announced an industry first programme which will help both SMEs and enterprises find each other and provide guidance on how to partner to deliver significant value to both sides.

On Thursday 10 June 2021, the GSA launched the GSA Entrepreneurs’ Club as a platform to bring enterprise buyers and smaller providers together, all aligned to recognised industry best practice. The Entrepreneur’s Club is a new membership level offering of the GSA, designed to arm smaller players with tools, best practice, thought leadership, guidance on how to market themselves better, how to sell into enterprises, as well as a platform to raise their brand profile and find new customers. At the same time the Club offers an avenue to help enterprises better understand how to find, select and partner with smaller players. The GSA Partner Platform is a key initiative within this, as the only platform for buyers to research partners based on performance rated by their customers – think check-a-trade.com but for the global technology and business services industry.

Simultaneously, the GSA launched its SME Code of Conduct– guidance of how the GSA would like to see enterprise buyers engage and work with start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs, which sits aligned to its existing Professional Code of Conduct and Corporate Code of Practice. The Code encourages among other behaviours:

·       Setting clear objectives

·       Having a win:win mentality

·       Running shorter and smaller RFP processes

·       Offering concise and clear contracts

·       Working to shorter payment terms

·       Having realistic due diligence procedures

·       To not request unfair exclusivity arrangements

·       To provide dedicated relationship management for quick and open dialogue