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Get to know the European market by consulting it through BABLE
Preliminary Market Consultation Tool
This tool has been developed under the SPARCS project and in collaboration with Espoo (Finland), Leipzig (Germany), Maia (Portugal), Kladno (Czech Republic), Kifissia (Greece), and Reykjavik (Iceland).
If you are a city that is looking to procure innovation, BABLE’s Market Consultation Tool allows you to consult the market in a quick and easy way. Publishing a market consultation on BABLE will automatically inform hundreds of relevant and innovative Smart City companies in our community of your intention of procurement, resulting in higher response rates.
Publishing market consultations can help cities in two ways:
  1. It better prepares cities for the tender process. By engaging with the market, cities can assess the possibilities of suppliers to deliver the solution they are looking for and evaluate how feasible their needs are.
  2. By inviting interested suppliers to be involved early on, their capabilities to respond with high-quality applications improve.

The use of the Market Consultation tool allows cities to expand their reach greatly beyond that of their official tendering portal. BABLE’s tool does not replace any official tendering process but rather exists as complement that will increase the amount of suppliers that respond on the cities’ tendering portal.

Benefits of Market Consultation through BABLE
Reach suppliers throughout all of Europe
Cross borders and reach a larger amount of suitable suppliers
Direct feedback from the most innovative suppliers
Obtain best value by getting direct feedback from some of the most innovative suppliers on the market
Language barriers disappear
Broaden your reach further with automatic translation to 7 European languages
Sort the network of suppliers by the solutions they offer
Choose from over 30 of the most relevant Smart City Solutions
Complementary service
100% free for cities to use, profile must be connected to a BABLE city page
Expert advice throughout the process
BABLE experts with many years of procurement experience are ready to help you make the most out of the consultation
Get started with the Market Consultation Invitation

Do you already know what type of innovation you would like to procure? Select the corresponding Solution area and we will directly present you with an automatically generated list of tech providers from all over Europe that specialise in that area.

After that we offer you the possibility to reach out to all of them (and others) by creating a Market Consultation invitation on BABLE.

See Overview Of Providers
Create Invitation
Receive Feedback From Providers

Not sure which Solution area to pick?

Solution areas on BABLE have been defined after analysing many use cases and Smart City solutions on the market. You can read more about each one of them here.

What our users say

We started the Market Consultation phase by identifying possible technology providers and contacted them individually. This approach not only took a long time, as it didn’t bring the expected results since most companies weren’t providing the exact solution we were looking for. Using the tool, the process became easier as the solution was previously described and only the organisations who were interested would register to participate at the event. We then did only one event with all the interested parties which saved us a lot of time as well. Additionally, BABLE has a large community, so they were able to go further and identify different companies from the ones we originally targeted.

We definitely will consider using the tool in the future as it can be a real time saver, key element to the success of the projects.

Carolina Gonçalves

AdEPorto
Gestora de Projetos
Porto, Portugal

BABLE Guide to Market Consultation
Learn more about Market Consultation, its benefits and limitations
What is a Preliminary Market Consultation?

Preliminary Market Consultations are a way to engage with the market in the early stages of procurement with the goal of improving the procurement process. They can involve extensive dialogue with suppliers or be as simple as a prior information notice about your procurement intentions.

How can I do one myself?

There are many methods to engage the market in a preliminary consultation. The correct approach should be based on an evaluation of a number of factors including the complexity of the solution looking to be procured, your own team’s knowledge level thereof, the market complexity and maturity, the goals of the procurement procedure such as policy or innovation objectives, and the expected value of the contract. Generally, more complex or innovative procurement procedures would lend themselves to more extensive consultations.

Challenges and benefits of cross-border consultation

Challenges:

  • Geographical differences, such as language
  • Likely a new procedure
  • More complex response
  • Greater time investment

Benefits:

  • Take advantage of the whole European Market (encouraged by Procurement Directive)
  • Receive more inputs, from more diverse sources
  • Exposure to more perspectives is especially valuable when implementing innovation
  • Create more competition and thus better-quality bids
Converting outcomes of consultation to effective procurement

Carefully review all inputs received during the consultation and incorporate the results in the tender-writing process. Is the budget appropriate? Are the specifications feasible and do they make sense? Will there be enough interest from the market to justify going to tender?

Get inspired by real use cases
Are you not sure yet of which kind of innovation your city needs, or would just like to explore what is possible? Search through our use cases to get inspired by BABLE's extensive database of smart city projects that is relevant to you.
Do you want to speak with a procurement expert first?
Contact us
Without obligation and free of charge.
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