How to Join Meet the Buyer 2021

The Supplier Development Programme is excited to welcome you to the Meet the Buyer virtual event on Tuesday, 8 June 2021. Meet the Buyer 2021 is the event of the year for engagement with buyers as the public sector turns towards economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Headline partners include the Scottish Government and Scotland Excel.

Agenda

The virtual portal and exhibitions will be open to registered suppliers from 10:00am until 4:00pm.

There will be a packed agenda with speakers throughout the day on hot topics such as Growth Deals, links to Community Wealth Building, sustainable procurement, Fair Work First, how to bring innovation to the public sector, the climate change emergency in public sector procurement, Brexit, and COVID-19 economic recovery plans.

There will be three themed virtual stages, each with a slightly different timetable, with time for visiting the virtual Exhibit Hall.

The event agenda can be found on the SDP Website.

Exhibitors

As well as the Supplier Development Programme itself, we have nearly 60 organisations exhibiting waiting to interact - allowing you to raise your profile as a business, as well as learn more about and prepare for upcoming bidding and supply chain opportunities.

A full list of exhibitors is displayed in your joining instructions.

Prepare to Join In

Ahead of the event, we ask that you take a moment to review your joining instructions. The joining instructions include IT considerations, how to navigate the virtual platform and make the most of the networking features available.

You can also view our short supplier walk-through video on YouTube.

You can join the Meet the Buyer event directly from the SDP website, simply login to the SDP website using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge from a PC or laptop. Your link to join the event will be clearly displayed upon log in.

We recommend that you log into the portal 10 minutes prior to the event start, to update your profile and familiarise yourself with the virtual platform.

Login to Join

If you log out of the virtual platform during the event and wish to re-join, simply log back into the SDP website and revisit the link shown.

Preview how a link will appear from 9:00am on Tuesday, 8 June 2021 when logged into the SDP website on the screenshot.

Scottish Government Exhibitions

Due to cyber security requirements, there is an additional step for suppliers to take to connect with Scottish Government stand representatives during Meet the Buyer. An exhibition stand notification will state that it is not possible to connect using the live one-to-one video button.

Therefore, suppliers should message stand staff representatives through the chat function to ask if they would like to participate in a video call. After a short conversation, suppliers will be given a URL link to a Teams meeting. The supplier must copy and paste the link into a new browser window to connect for a face-to-face virtual meeting with Scottish Government.

The exhibitions that require this additional step include:

• Scottish Government - Public Contracts Scotland (PCS)
• Scottish Government Procurement: Collaborative Procurement Division
• Scottish Government Procurement: Information and Support for Suppliers
• Scottish Government: Procurement Services Division
• Social Security Scotland Procurement & Commercial Team
• Transport Scotland

The Supplier Development Programme understands that this extra step may be burdensome; however, in this virtual world we are doing our utmost to ensure participation of buyers and decision makers whilst balancing cyber resilience.

You can also view a 1-minute walk-through video of the workaround for Scottish Government on YouTube.

Multiple Bookings

If you registered multiple tickets to attend Meet the Buyer 2021 on 8 June, SDP recently updated our booking system to ensure there is a ‘one click’ sign on for the day. This means that you are now required to have a unique email address for each ticket. Please can you re-register your tickets on the SDP website by using the login and filling in the registration form. You will be prompted to add individual names and emails for extra tickets, and everyone should receive an individual confirmation to join. Please note: this process can take up to 10 minutes during the event, so please be patient!

Hashtag

The official hashtag for this event is #MeetTheBuyer2021. Please follow SDP Scotland on Social Media: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - YouTube.

Support

If you experience any difficulties attending the event, please:

• Contact the support desk using the red icon to the top right-hand corner within the platform.
• Email for further technical support mtbsuppliersupport@sdpscotland.co.uk.
• Email info@sdpscotland.co.uk for support from the SDP Team.