Companies discover a 'NETA' way

Mar 13 2007 By The Journal

Until recently, The NETA Training Group, one of the country's leading providers of vocational skills training, couldn't find an effective way of examining the potential market arising from the newest EU member states.

Philip Cooper, project manager at NETA, explained: "We have offered quality training since 1975. NETA has gained recognition as one of the UK's largest vocational training providers, offering a diverse range of services to occupational sectors, predominantly in engineering and construction. We hold accreditations with such bodies as ECITB, City & Guilds, CITB, NASC, RTITB and provide training towards NVQ.

"We help meet the training needs of over 2500 companies a year in a range of areas and we were the first Centre of Vocational Excellence for Engineering Construction," he added.

"We knew that the EU enlargement would present new opportunities for us in the new member states, as well as existing countries such as Cyprus and Poland, but we knew that there is a threat of new competitors bidding against us for the UK market, which we also must monitor.

"Then we were introduced to the Euro Info Centre's tenders facility - C-tenders - a portal powered by the TenderTap service provided by Nimis Limited. This has allowed us to streamline our efforts - having all the resources we need in one place probably saves us an hour a day."

NETA initially adopted the service to source relevant tender opportunities efficiently. It now uses TenderTap to analyse market trends and keep track of competitor activity too.

"I like the fact that the facility is always available, whenever it is convenient for me to use it," said Philip. "C-tenders has become an invaluable facility for us. We access new opportunities as they are published and the market analysis tools are a real bonus."

C-tenders - which is available for free to North-East companies - is powered by TenderTap which is produced by award winning information system providers, Nimis Limited, of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Its managing director, Nick Mapletoft, said: "TenderTap is an out-sourced solution that enables organisations to offer tender opportunities and market browsing facilities to their members. It provides a single, comprehensive gateway for users to access a number of tender opportunities that they may not be aware of or have access to - making it an intelligent business development tool.

"Our industry experts and information researchers harvest around 8,000 opportunities every week from across the UK, Europe and USA."