The G-Cloud 14 update is that it’s not happening for another year, G-Cloud 13 will instead be extended for another year following a recent announcement.

This doesn’t affect our customers, you can still buy direct from G-Cloud, but alongside this announcement came some news that we certainly welcome.

Crown Commercial Services are becoming more diligent in the checks they are making in respect to the pricing elements contained within each product on the digital marketplace.

One of the key principles is that the prices are meant to be displayed in a clear and coherent manner, so there’s no need for any further clarification.

Pricing documents must be simple and easy to understand without being misleading. However, this needs to be accurately reflected in what suppliers deliver.

Below are two examples of pricing for the same product live on G-Cloud today.

Supplier X

Licence Fee - Year 1 

Monthly Fee    - £250 – £1,000

Annual Fee   - £3,000 – £12,000

Licence Fee - Year 2

Monthly Fee   - £250 – £1,000

Annual Fee    - £3,000 – £12,000

This is in clear breach of the key principle above, there is no way to ascertain precisely what this product will cost, due to the ranged nature of the pricing structure.

Pentagull

The annual charge for this product is £4,495. This price includes hosting, application management, relevant licenses, service management, and help desk support.

It does what it’s meant to do; it tells you exactly what you will pay for the service, as one of our customers said, “Pentagull do exactly what it says on the tin”.

As a company, we have fully embraced the digital marketplace, we certainly can see huge benefits that it brings. Consequently, we support this direction of travel taken by the CCCS, we find many of our competitors in clear breach of the pricing principles that form one of the cornerstones of the digital marketplace.

We have and will continue to list all our products as clearly and as fairly as possible. A good working relationship starts with mutual trust as a foundation stone, we avidly believe that part of this is being transparent as possible about our pricing.

We look forward to GCloud 14 bringing more clarity to its customers.