Disaster Expo Frankfurt 2024
This month our Procurement Manager Teodora Barglazan attended the Disasters Expo Europe in Frankfurt (Germany). A large exhibition and conference meetup for disaster and emergency response professionals globally. Aiming to bring the industry and the disaster and emergency response professionals under one roof for two days.
Teodora and her team is thankful for all the great conversations, discussions and interactions, to support our sector even further. Discussions from tarpaulin manufacturers to solar lantern producers, from emergency food manufacturing to circular waste management service providers, and from Logistical Service Providers to shelter innovators. We received many inquiries from industry, suppliers and manufacturers to become a part of the Solvoz database, so our users can reach out to them constantly, opening up markets globally.
We also had various discussions considering more broader partnerships for white-labeled portals of Solvoz in dedicated domains, or service/product areas. Please reach out to us if you have any questions, we might have missed you in Frankfurt, or if you weren’t in Frankfurt but relish a conversation with us about creating marketplaces or portals to bring the sector and industry together: to serve our sector efficiently, effectively and responsibly.
Sustainable Procurement Criteria: Survey and Workshop (Horizon Europe funded project)
Solvoz is part of the Waste management challenges in humanitarian operations Consortium, called the WORM project. A Horizon Europe project aiming to design guidelines and support actions for circular economy in the humanitarian sector. It integrates bio-based technological solutions, leverages procurement for waste reduction, improves waste management methods and prioritises the sustainable livelihoods of waste pickers. WORM focuses on two selected settings: field hospital deployments and humanitarian livelihood programmes.
Solvoz is leading one of the work packages, to support the consortium members and the sector with outputs regarding sustainable procurement and criteria for designated product groups and more holistically a sustainable procurement criteria framework. Leading to the workshop and the forthcoming report, the consortium has launched a survey last week, to collect opinions from the humanitarian sector and beyond on their perception of “sustainability”. The results of this survey will be used to frame the sustainability categories and criteria for the sustainability procurement guidelines. We would like to gather opinions from, Government officials, National and local NGO staff, International NGO staff (procurement, environment, sustainability, etc.) as well as Suppliers/Vendors. In other words, you!
We would like to ask you to circulate this invitation for the survey within your networks, and we relish your feedback and input for this survey (you can access the survey here). The preliminary results of the survey will be presented at the Sustainable Procurement Criteria workshop that is co-hosted by Solvoz and Kühne Logistics University, with participation from European Commission and other donors. This workshop takes place on the 28th of June and is invite only. In case you wish to attend and contribute to this workshop, apply for the webinar here.
WORM has started in January 2024 and is a two-year collaborative European project funded by the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101135392. The consortium is coordinated by Hanken School of Economics (Finland), with the following consortium partners: Solvoz, Kuehne Logistics University, The Finnish Red Cross, Innovation Norway, RMIT University Vietnam, Pamela Steel Associates, Hoi Chu Thap Do Viet Nam Association, International Medical Corps Croatia and Euronovia. As well as with the associated Partners: Kuehne+Nagel, International Committee of the Red Cross – ICRC, Action contre la Faim, Catholic Relief Services, Zero Waste Scotland and Norwegian Refugee Council. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. (See for more information about work on their website).
New Feature rolled out on all portals: Multi-teams and Organisational functionality
Do you work with various organisations or teams? Did you know that Solvoz now allows you to switch between your accounts and can also create teams within your accounts? For example, you can switch between your organisational account to a cluster rollout you might be part of. But we didn’t stop there with developing our functionality to support the complexity of our sector! We now also have multi-team functionality available in Solvoz!
Does your organisation in Uganda have three projects? Each project can have a team environment within your organisational account! Teams can phrase their demand and various demands can be aggregated at headquarters level for example. Aggregation (pooling of demand) can also take place to provide support in rapid onset emergencies, allowing aggregation (pooling) from different organisations and across projects. Another example could be having your technical team contribute to the development of your internal catalogue of WASH products, services and innovations. Whereby at various levels you can decide to publish the information provided (internally within teams, within the organisation or globally).
White-labeled portals – what’s in it for me?
You might have read it above, but Solvoz is not only available for Procurement as a Service (supporting one-off market assessments or RFQs for our sectors) or as a subscription model (SaaS), we also offer our technology to our sectors as a white-labelled solution. Are you unsure what that means? You are not the only one, given the amount of questions we have received over the last weeks!
It has been designed to empower your NGO, alliance or other impact-driven organisation, by putting our trailblazing technology directly into your hands, with your brand: providing you with the opportunity to craft your own uniquely branded Solvoz-powered platform.
We have developed this service as a direct response to the numerous inquiries we have received from various organisations within our sector during recent years. These inquiries have consistently emphasised the need for a customisable portal that leverages Solvoz’s unique approach and technology. These organisations or alliances do not want to use a Solvoz branded website, but would relish to use our technology as their own.
We can now support your organisations with such a request, to either our catalogue management technology or with the integration of our market assessment tool (our e-sourcing functionality). We have developed these two distinct options to best meet the diverse needs of organisations in our sector. Our white-labelling service is therefore offered on either a Catalogue technology only and Catalogue Plus E-procurement Technologybasis. The Solvoz technology has been developed as highly configurable, supporting open and closed markets and user basis, multi-lingual and various set up configurations are possible. All on your distinct URL, with your unique color scheme, information pages with your brand.
You might have come across one of the white-labelled portals recently, NCDconnect. A fast growing innovative and pioneering disease-focused procurement platform made-to-measure for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). NCDconnect makes quality medicines, medical supplies and diagnostics for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) accessible to all (make sure to follow them in case you have a keen interest in NCD programming in Low and Middle-Income countries!).
Want to learn more?
Contact us today if we can support you with your market assessments, desire to set up your portal or wish to partner with us! We are looking forward to hearing from you!
Also, are you a supplier, manufacturer or service provider that wants to access the markets Solvoz serves? Increase your visibility to this sector, or support the sector with your expertise about your product categories? We host free online webinars every month (sign up here – there are two scheduled in June, the 4th and 27th) or access our e-learning module right now to create a supplier account today!
As a final closing remark of this newsletter: did you know the Solvoz tool is now also available in Spanish? Earlier we released our tool already in French, Ukrainian, Dutch and Chinese, besides our English version.
