SMEs & vendors
Aggregated institutional demand, predictable framework contracts, and a selection process you can see the workings of. One annual subscription, no commission on what you sell.
Who should apply
Kenyan businesses that can supply institutions reliably and at scale: publishers and booksellers, furniture manufacturers, stationers, laboratory and medical suppliers, agricultural input distributors, and equipment and services vendors serving schools, hospitals and cooperatives.
Size is not the qualifier. Reliability is. A well-run SME that delivers on time and stands behind its product is exactly who these frameworks are designed to reach. What you do need is to be properly registered, tax compliant, insured, and able to service institutional order volumes.
What you get
- Aggregated institutional demand. Reach the members of an entire association through one agreement instead of chasing institutions one at a time.
- Predictable framework contracts. Terms, prices and service levels agreed once, typically for twelve months, with defined notice and renewal.
- Fair, transparent selection. Criteria and weightings published before you bid. Bids sealed until the deadline. Evaluation and award recorded.
- Digital order & invoice flow. Orders arrive structured and complete. Confirmations, delivery status and invoices move through one channel.
- Simple annual subscription. A flat fee. No commission, no percentage of what you sell.
- API integration with your ERP. Push your catalogue and pull orders directly into the systems you already run.
What we do not do
Prequalification: what you will need
Suppliers are prequalified before any catalogue goes live. This is the promise we make to every buying institution, so the checklist is not negotiable. Exact requirements vary by category, and regulated categories carry additional licensing, but the core is consistent:
- Certificate of Incorporation or business registration
- Valid KRA Tax Compliance Certificate
- Public liability insurance appropriate to what you supply
- Recent audited accounts or financial statements
- Category-specific licences where they apply, such as a Pharmacy and Poisons Board licence for medical supplies, or a KEBS standardisation mark for regulated goods
- Trade references and evidence of comparable institutional delivery
Documents carry expiry dates and we track them. An expired tax compliance certificate or lapsed insurance will suspend your catalogue until it is replaced, so keep them current.
The process, end to end
- 1
You apply
Tell us what you supply, where you can deliver, and the institutional volumes you can handle. We come back within two working days. - 2
Your account and checklist are created
You get a supplier account with a compliance checklist specific to your category. Nothing is hidden. You can see exactly what is outstanding. - 3
You upload your documents
Company, tax, insurance and category-specific documents go up through the platform. You can see the status of each one. - 4
We review
Each document is checked and your application is approved, rejected, or returned for resubmission with the reason stated. Resubmission is normal, and most first applications need one clarification. - 5
You are assigned to a framework
Approval alone does not put you in front of buyers. You are assigned to a specific framework agreement, and your catalogue for that framework is approved before it publishes. - 6
Your transaction profile is enabled
Once your catalogue is live, ordering is switched on and institutions can place call-offs against your prices.
How you get selected
Open and closed competitions
Some competitions are open to every registered supplier in the category. Others are closed to a named shortlist, which is usually where an association has asked for a specific group of suppliers or where the category is tightly regulated.
Open competitions are published on the Opportunities page, where anyone can read them. You can subscribe for alerts before you register, so you can judge the kind of work coming through before you commit to prequalification.
Competitive tendering
For contested categories we publish requirements, evaluation criteria and their weightings before bidding opens. You submit a sealed bid with your compliance documents. Bids stay sealed until the deadline, and nobody, including us, sees a price before then. Evaluation is against the published criteria, and the award recommendation goes to the association for endorsement.
Mini-competitions
Where a framework is awarded to several suppliers, larger individual requirements go to a mini-competition among those suppliers. You quote against published criteria and quotes stay sealed until close.
One-off bulk purchases
Not every competition leads to a twelve-month framework. Some categories are bought once a year, and insurance is the clearest example. There an association runs a single competition and awards it once. The bidding, the evaluation and the endorsement work the same way, but there is no ongoing catalogue to maintain afterwards.
Lowest price does not automatically win
Your catalogue and your prices
Once you are on a framework, your prices are locked to that agreement and published as a versioned catalogue. Buyers see the contract price and the reference open-market price alongside it.
Changing a price or adding an item
You can request a price change or a new item at any time. The first thing checked is whether the agreement permits that change. Many contracts allow indexed increases against defined input costs and refuse increases outside them. If the contract does not permit it, the request is declined and the reason recorded.
Where a change is permitted, it goes through approval, receives an effective date, and produces a new catalogue version. Orders placed before the effective date stand at the old price. This protects you as much as the buyer: the version history is the record of what was agreed when.
What is measured, and what happens if it slips
Your performance record travels with you across every framework you are on. Four things are tracked continuously:
- On-time delivery
- Against agreed lead times
- Order acceptance
- Confirmed vs declined
- Non-conformances
- Short, late, defective, wrong item
- Open disputes
- Unresolved buyer issues
Isolated problems happen and are resolved. A pattern is different: repeated non-conformance triggers a formal review that can lead to suspension from a framework or removal from it altogether. Suspension stops new orders; it does not cancel in-progress ones.
We would rather help you fix a problem than delist you. You will be told what the issue is and given the chance to resolve it. But institutions were promised vetted suppliers, and that promise has to hold twelve months in, not just on day one.
Connecting your ERP
Registered suppliers can integrate their ERP or accounting system via APIs, so orders, confirmations and invoices flow directly between our system and yours. If you already handle institutional volume, this removes the re-keying entirely.
Integration is optional, and the web console covers everything without it.
Apply to supply
Tell us what you supply and where you can deliver. We respond within two working days and guide you through prequalification from there.