Market report

Ministry of Defence Reveals Commercial Pipeline Plans

Written 
May 23, 2024
 by 
Xavier Garnham
Get the report
Market report

Ministry of Defence Reveals Commercial Pipeline Plans

Written 
May 23, 2024
 by 
Xavier Garnham
Get the report
In this report

Introduction

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) updated its commercial pipeline on the 30th April 2024 to give suppliers a forward look into upcoming procurement activity for all contracts valued over £2m over the next 18 months.

Overall, 14 different MoD departments have published 443 upcoming contracts with a total value of more than £37b.

443

Upcoming opportunities

£37,220,630,566

Valued at a total £37b opportunity for suppliers

37.2%

With 37.2% headed towards SME companies

For your convenience, this report outlines key learnings from the commercial pipeline update to help you:

  • Target relevant departments: Follow the money to see where the bulk of the MoD contracts are heading with a department analysis.
  • Anticipate the top routes to market: Qualify opportunities by understanding the MoD’s procurement strategy and what frameworks to expect.
  • Identify upcoming opportunities: Focus your sales effort with tactics to find contracts over and under the £2m pipeline reporting threshold.
  • Engage with relevant decision makers: Build trust with procurement decision makers to win more bids.
Stotles Tip

To identify specific upcoming MoD opportunities for your business, access the 2024/25 commercial pipeline document here.

Section One

Target relevant departments

The MoD is responsible for 14 different departments, each of which governs a different defence area.

Below, we visualise the sum of pipeline funding allocated to each department to help you focus your sales efforts on the most significant opportunities within this account.

DepartmentTotal Pipeline Value
Defence Infrastructure Organisaton (DIO)£19,025,533,584
Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S)£15,067,566,426
StratCom£1,519,518,577
Air£1,168,599,999
Home Office (HO)£550,250,000
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL)£484,980,000
Defence Digital (DD)£396,484,210
Army£184,448,831
Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA)£136,110,447
UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO)£94,600,000
Navy£46,217,992
Oil and Pipelines Agency (OPA)£39,800,000
Defence Nuclear Organisation (DNO)£18,000,000
Atomic Weapons Enablement (AWE)£7,020,000

Top departments for SMEs

The above table clearly shows that DE&S and DIO represent the highest areas of investment for 2024/2025. However, these opportunities might not be relevant for smaller businesses.

Digging into the contracts behind the data, DE&S and DIO plan to procure only 21% of their upcoming contracts from SMEs, with most of these contracts suited for construction, munitions, and vehicle manufacturers. Large niche suppliers with historical relationships will be preferred within these departments.

For SMEs, we recommend you deprioritise DE&S and DIO. Instead, target departments like Defence Digital (DD), which primarily procures software, or the Navy which have declared 100% of their contracts being suitable for SMEs.

Stotles Tip

Stotles customers use our buyer profiles to deeply understand procurement activity within their target accounts. To help you get started, we've provided a guest pass for the MoD for free.

Section two

Anticipate the top routes to market

The MoD commercial pipeline update reveals the planned route to market for every contract valued above £2m. Below we've listed frameworks that the MoD expect to procure future contracts through published in the commercial pipeline update.

Understanding what frameworks MoD procures through allows you to effectively plan your go-to-market strategy. With CCS frameworks leading the way, it's essential suppliers closely track frameworks emerging from this organisation.

For active frameworks you are not yet listed on, we recommend suppliers track key dates for upcoming renewals and identify potential partner suppliers already listed to maximise your chances of winning a contract.

Stotles Tip

Successful suppliers use Stotles' new Frameworks Intelligence feature on their target accounts to bid on the most promising opportunities.

section three

Identify upcoming opportunities

Now you know which departments the MoD is investing in and what frameworks they are using, the next step is to identify relevant contracts you can target.

Upcoming contracts over £2m reporting threshold

Containing all future opportunities over £2m, we've highlighted the top 5 digital contracts to demonstrate how you can use the commercial pipeline to identify potential opportunities in your industry.

Contract TitleEstimated Contract ValueEstimated tender release dateFrameworkBuyer
Operational Service Management (OSM) Service Centre£120,000,000July 2025N/ADefence Digital
The provision of a Platform Complex Systems Support Partner service£21,853,000October 2024N/ASubmarine Delivery Agency
Replacement ERP Solution£10,000,000July 2024CCS RM6194 BOS / RM6193 SDISUK Hydrographic Office
Data Centre Infrastructure Upgrade£6,000,000February 2024CCS (TBC)Defence Science and Technology Laboratory
Digital and Data Portfolio and Resource Management Services£4,499,464September 2024Technology Services 3Navy

For suppliers that are outside of the digital industry, take a look at the MoD commercial pipeline update to find upcoming opportunities that suit your business.

Under the £2m reporting threshold

The MoD commercial pipeline update only provides visibility into contracts with an expected value above £2m. For contracts under £2m, the MoD is not required to publish a prior pipeline contract.

To anticipate upcoming opportunities below this threshold, suppliers typically use expiring contracts to indicate contracts to potentially target renewals.

EXPERT VOICE
“Expiring contracts allow us to forecast what we expect to emerge from a particular buyer or service.”
Josh Meadows
Head of Commercial
 at 
Priority Digital Health

Using the Stotles platform, customers can easily identify relevant upcoming expiries to target based on their industry and business signals. To demonstrate the opportunities involved, we've highlighted below 5 upcoming expiries for IT & Software industry suppliers to consider.

Stotles Tip

Using the Stotles platform, our customers are easily able to identify upcoming contract expiries to target across the public sector. Ready to find your next big win?

Section four

Engage with relevant decision-makers

Successful defence suppliers pre-engage with procurement decision-makers over renewing contracts. This allows you to showcase your product, build trust across the whole buyer organisation, and gather unpublished information about the opportunity.

We have highlighted senior procurement decision-makers in the MoD below to demonstrate how you can use Stotles to identify relevant decision-makers.

Stotles Tip

To explore the contact finder feature further and find a list of the most important decision makers, get in touch with a member of our team.

Summary

Next steps

The MoD commercial pipeline update allows us to understand routes to market across the 14 departments and the essential frameworks to be on to win more contracts.

This report should enable your sales teams to efficiently identify and qualify the most promising opportunities whilst using the Stotles platform to pinpoint upcoming contract renewals and what key decision makers to engage with.

This report was designed using the MoD pipeline update in tandem with Stotles data to provide suppliers with a tool to do better business with the MoD.

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