Frequently asked.

NatQuest is a Commercial Intelligence company. It helps public institutions, growth enterprises and complex supply chains make better commercial decisions through three connected capability areas: Technology, Advisory & Transformation, and Knowledge & Capability. The common thread is turning evidence into decisions that can be defended and repeated, rather than analysis that is produced and filed.

A Commercial Intelligence company applies artificial intelligence, trusted data, market insight and commercial judgement to commercial decision-making. Rather than delivering a report and leaving, it works on the decision itself: the information it draws on, the criteria it is judged against, and the record it leaves behind. NatQuest applies this across procurement, tendering, supplier management and supply chain.

NatQuest is a Scottish company with its registered office at Inspire Hub, Level 6 Graham Hill Building, 50 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XP. It is registered in Scotland as NatQuest Limited, company number SC762053. It is headquartered in Glasgow, with projects delivered across the United Kingdom, Africa and the Middle East.

NatQuest is led by Dr Salisu Uba, FCIPS, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, a commercial and procurement transformation leader; and Abraham Onoja, Chief Technology Officer, who leads the technology behind the company’s intelligence-led platforms. Every engagement has a named, senior point of contact.

NatQuest works with commercial, procurement and finance leaders in public, regulated and asset-intensive organisations, across three sectors: Energy & Infrastructure, Financial Services and the Public Sector. In the UK public sector, bodies that can buy through G-Cloud 15 include central government, devolved administrations, local authorities, NHS and health bodies, education institutions and emergency services. It is UK-based, with projects delivered across the United Kingdom, Africa and the Middle East, directly and through partners.

Commercial Intelligence is the disciplined application of artificial intelligence, trusted data, market insight and commercial judgement to decisions that create, protect or recover organisational value. It joins evidence directly to the act of deciding, rather than producing analysis that is delivered and then filed.

Business intelligence reports what happened: dashboards, historic performance, trend lines. Commercial Intelligence is judged on whether a specific commercial decision was measurably better for having been informed. The test is not whether the analysis was accurate, but whether the award, negotiation or make-or-buy call it supported produced more value.

Market intelligence describes an external market: who the suppliers are, what capacity exists, where prices are moving. Commercial Intelligence uses that picture but extends inward, joining it to an organisation’s own spend, contracts and decision processes so the external view changes what actually gets bought.

Organisations whose commercial decisions are significant, repeated and scrutinised: public bodies awarding contracts under legal duties of transparency, enterprises whose margin depends on what they buy, and organisations running supply chains where a single sourcing decision carries operational risk.

The flywheel describes four movements that compound: Deploy, putting intelligence into the decision; Optimise, improving the decisions being made; Orchestrate, connecting decisions across functions so they reinforce rather than conflict; and Sustain, keeping capability in the organisation after external support ends.

Advisory is NatQuest's practice for redesigning how commercial decisions get made: the operating model they run through, the governance that holds them accountable, and the category strategy that directs them. It spans operating model design, governance and decision rights, category and sourcing strategy, tender and evaluation design, and contract and supplier governance, engaged together or on their own.

Conventional consultancy typically produces a recommendation and departs, and the capability to repeat the analysis usually leaves with the team that produced it. NatQuest's advisory work is judged on whether the way decisions get made afterwards is actually different: the output is a redesigned way of working, not a slide pack, and the capability is built to stay with the organisation's own team.

The client does. Advisory work is adviser-led: a named, senior person is accountable for every recommendation, but decision rights stay with the organisation that has to live with the outcome. The work designs the evidence and the process a decision goes through. It does not make the decision itself.

It connects. NatQuest works through three capability areas (Technology, Advisory & Transformation, and Knowledge & Capability) that compound when run together: research supplies the evidence advisory designs decisions around, advisory shapes what the technology needs to do, and capability work makes sure a redesign survives after the engagement ends. Each also stands alone.

Five gates: the decision is owned by a named senior person, framed with agreed criteria before evidence is gathered, evidenced from sources someone else can check, tested against a credible alternative, and recorded in a form that can be reconstructed later. A recommendation that skips a gate is treated as unfinished, not final.

By establishing which of the five evidence gates are already in place and which are not; most organisations already clear some of them. That diagnostic sets the scope of the engagement, rather than a fixed package being applied regardless of where the organisation is starting from.

NatQuest's technology practice builds and deploys intelligent systems for procurement and supply chain decisions: OpenTender.AI technology, SCM Genius Network specialist expertise, and bespoke systems built around a specific decision inside a client's own environment. Every system is built so the reasoning behind an output can be inspected, not just its conclusion.

OpenTender.AI and the SCM Genius Network are ready platforms, for tendering and for specialist matching, available now. A bespoke system is built where neither platform fits: spend analysis, supplier risk, category or market decisions. It follows the same deployment and governance model, sized to the decision it serves.

In practice, it runs inside your own cloud environment, or in a private, single-tenant deployment set up for you alone, never a shared, multi-client service. Access, model choice, hosting and integration points are agreed before build starts; the deployment model is one of the first things a technology engagement scopes.

Decision intelligence is the design of how a decision actually gets made (the evidence it draws on, the criteria it's judged against, and the record it leaves) so the outcome doesn't depend on who happens to be in the room. It's the discipline NatQuest's technology practice builds systems around.

No. The platforms are ready to use without an internal AI team, and bespoke systems are built and supported by NatQuest's technology practice. Where a client wants to run or extend a system themselves over time, that capability is transferred deliberately as part of the engagement, rather than assumed to already exist.

With the decision, not the technology: which decision is slow, inconsistent or hard to defend, and what evidence should be informing it. That scopes what actually gets built (platform, bespoke system, or both) and the deployment and governance model that will sit around it. Contact the team to start that conversation.

Integration is scoped as part of the engagement rather than assumed. A system is built to work alongside the procurement, contract or case-management tools already in place, reading from them and feeding back into them, rather than requiring them to be replaced first.

NatQuest’s research turns market, supplier, tender and spend data into evidence for commercial decisions: tender-market analysis, supply-market intelligence, benchmarking and foresight. Every output is cited to its source, and every assumption beyond the raw fact is stated rather than folded into the finding, so a reader can check it independently.

Tender-market analysis reads how tender and framework activity actually behaves in a market (competitive dynamics, award patterns and how a call-off route is likely to play out), built from public procurement records such as contract notices and framework agreements rather than internal assumption.

Supply-market intelligence is a structured, current view of a supplier market (capacity, concentration, pricing movement and risk), built by combining supplier-facing sources with an organisation’s own spend and contract data, so a sourcing decision is informed by the market as it is now, not as it was assumed to be.

Each finding is built from a primary source (a register, filing, framework page or spend record), checked against that source on a stated date. Where the analysis goes beyond the raw fact, the inference is stated explicitly rather than folded into the number, and the source is attached to the output so a reader can check it directly.

Yes. Published articles and insights are on the Insights page, each carrying its own sources where the analysis draws on external fact. For example, the piece on what G-Cloud 15 changes for public sector buyers cites the Government Commercial Agency and the Procurement Act 2023 throughout. Representative engagement themes are published the same way, clearly marked as such; named client work is shared only with the client’s written approval.

Industry Research is one of the four Knowledge & Capability offerings, and it supplies the evidence the rest of NatQuest works from: it informs what advisory recommends, shapes what technology is built to do, and gives capability teams something real to build judgement against. Each offering still works alone; run together, the evidence compounds because research feeds the same standard across all three capability areas.

A generic report benchmarks against an undefined average. NatQuest states the reference set explicitly (what a figure was compared against, and when) so a reader can judge whether the comparison actually applies to their situation, rather than accept a percentile with no visible basis.

Capability development is NatQuest's discipline for preparing people, teams and institutions to work with intelligent systems critically rather than passively. It runs inside advisory, technology and research engagements rather than as a stand-alone course, and it is judged on what a team can do, unsupported, once the engagement ends.

Training transfers information; capability development transfers judgement inside a real decision. Sessions are built around the tender, category strategy or supplier decision a team is already working on rather than a hypothetical case study, so what is learned is what was just used, on a decision that mattered.

No. Capability development applies to how a team makes commercial decisions generally, with or without a specific platform. It becomes more specific once a system such as OpenTender.AI is in use, because there is then a live output the team needs to question rather than accept.

It scales with the engagement it sits inside, from a single tender cycle to a multi-year transformation, and is scoped with each client rather than sold as a fixed-length course. The handover is complete when the team can run the process unsupported, not on a calendar date.

ValueNovation™ is NatQuest's executive programme for procurement and commercial transformation: masterclasses, roundtables and applied AI labs. It is capability development delivered as a structured, scheduled programme for senior leaders, alongside the embedded, engagement-based capability work this page describes.

Whoever owns the decisions in scope (category managers, commercial directors or heads of procurement), provided they have the authority to change how a decision is actually made, not just to attend sessions about it. Capability work is scoped around a decision, not a department.

Readiness is demonstrated, not scheduled. A team is ready when it can make the decision, explain its reasoning to a challenge panel, and produce the evidence trail without NatQuest in the room, the standard the handover model on this page is built to reach.

OpenTender.AI is NatQuest’s platform for the tendering workflow: developing, managing, evaluating and responding to tenders. It builds a private tender bank from an organisation’s past responses, drafts new submissions in that organisation’s own voice using private AI models, and scores incoming submissions against predefined criteria.

Past responses, method statements and supporting evidence are organised into a private, searchable tender bank. New submissions draw on that proven material rather than being written from scratch. The tender bank stays private to the organisation and is never exposed to other users or used to train shared models.

Yes. Alongside response drafting, OpenTender.AI scores incoming submissions against evaluation criteria defined in advance by the buying organisation. The intent is a consistent, recorded assessment of every bid against the same published standards, with the evaluation trail preserved.

Confirm the service’s data-processing terms before uploading tender content. Ask which model providers are used, whether data is retained or used for training, where it is hosted and who can access it. Your team should review and approve generated drafts before use.

OpenTender.AI is designed to reduce repetitive drafting and evaluation work. Results depend on your source material, workflow and review requirements. Agree a baseline and assess any time savings alongside accuracy, rework and decision quality during a pilot.

OpenTender.AI is currently available through early access rather than open sign-up. Register your interest through the early-access form and the team will confirm availability, onboarding requirements and timelines for your organisation.

The SCM Genius Network connects organisations with vetted procurement, contracts and supply chain specialists. A requirement is described, AI matches suitable specialists from the network, the organisation chooses who to engage, and the work runs on the platform against clear milestones. Specialists can also join an engagement NatQuest leads, where a named NatQuest professional is accountable for every material decision.

Every specialist in the network has their credentials and track record checked before admission. The vetting covers professional qualifications, verifiable delivery history and domain depth in procurement, contracts or supply chain, so the shortlist a buyer receives has already cleared a quality bar.

Describing a project takes about fifteen minutes: scope, timeline and constraints. Matching follows, and engagement is typically measured in days rather than the weeks a conventional recruitment or consultancy process takes.

Engagement is on demand, with no retainers. Organisations pay for the specialist capacity they use, for as long as they need it. This suits requirements that are real but too short, too specialised or too uncertain to justify a permanent hire.

Typical engagements include interim procurement and category leadership, contract and commercial management, supply chain diagnostics, sourcing project delivery, and specialist support on tenders. The network spans multiple geographies, so local market insight can be matched to a global requirement.

ValueNovation is NatQuest’s executive programme framework for commercial and procurement transformation. It combines the Global Transformation Masterclass, executive roundtables, AI and digitalisation labs, and a transformation playbook, so senior teams design change they are then equipped to run themselves.

They are designed for senior commercial leaders (chief procurement officers, commercial and finance directors, and the teams reporting to them) in organisations undertaking procurement or supply chain transformation. Programmes run open-enrolment and in-company.

Programmes run in London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Istanbul, Dubai, Riyadh, Kigali, Casablanca and Marrakech, with further locations on request, and in-house at a client’s own location. The in-house format allows the content to be built around a specific transformation the organisation is already undertaking.

Request the programme calendar through the contact form and the team will send current cohort dates, formats and pricing. Dates are confirmed cohort by cohort rather than published a year in advance, so the calendar reflects what is actually scheduled.

AI is used where it demonstrably improves a commercial decision: matching specialists to requirements, drafting and evaluating tender responses, and analysing markets and spend. Systems are adviser-led, meaning a named senior person is accountable for what the system produces. Every AI output is cited and traceable.

No. NatQuest’s position is that intelligent systems inform decisions and people make them. Every engagement has a named, senior point of contact who is accountable for recommendations. AI outputs carry citations so the evidence behind any recommendation can be inspected and challenged.

Client data is handled under GDPR, remains the property of the client, and is not used to train shared or public models. Hosting and data-residency arrangements are confirmed in writing before an engagement begins, with UK data residency available for UK work.

Yes, and NatQuest treats that as a requirement rather than a feature. Recommendations are traceable to their evidence, AI outputs are cited, and evaluation trails are preserved, which matters particularly in public procurement, where award decisions must be defensible on the record.

G-Cloud 15 (framework reference RM1557.15) is the fifteenth iteration of the UK government framework for buying cloud services. It lets eligible public bodies buy cloud hosting, cloud software and cloud support on pre-agreed terms without running a full procurement. It is operated by the Government Commercial Agency and is the first G-Cloud let under the Procurement Act 2023.

G-Cloud 15 is divided into five lots: Lot 1a and Lot 1b for Cloud Hosting, Lot 2a for Infrastructure Software as a Service, Lot 2b for Software as a Service, and Lot 3 for Cloud Support. Buyers choose the lot matching what they are purchasing, then call off from the suppliers listed within it.

Crown Commercial Service became the Government Commercial Agency on 1 April 2026, when it merged with the Cabinet Office’s central commercial teams. Existing frameworks, contracts and call-off agreements carried over unchanged. The Government Commercial Agency is now the correct name for the body operating cross-government frameworks including G-Cloud.

GCA provides the Public Procurement Gateway for procurement services, while public supplier records remain accessible through the Digital Marketplace. Use the current GCA agreement page and buyer guidance to confirm the purchasing route for your service.

Not necessarily. G-Cloud permits call-off both with and without further competition. Review the available services, follow your organisation’s own process and the framework’s call-off guidance, and keep your evaluation audit trail either way. Where a catalogue entry already meets the requirement, direct award may be available.

NatQuest’s submitted portfolio comprises the Intelligent Procurement Tender Management Platform and seven Cloud Support services. Confirm the current service listing, lot and pricing before starting a call-off. SCM Genius Network specialist staffing is a separate offer; G-Cloud does not cover recruitment or the provision of interims.

Data residency and hosting arrangements are confirmed in writing for each engagement before any call-off is completed. Ask for the proposed hosting region, subprocessors, retention policy and access controls. Ask the team for the current hosting and data-residency statement covering your specific requirement.

Yes. NatQuest is certified under the UK Government’s Cyber Essentials scheme, which covers baseline controls that protect systems and data against common internet-based threats. Ask our team for the certificate’s scope and expiry, and for security documentation covering your proposed service.

Named public sector references are available on request, subject to the client’s written approval. NatQuest does not publish client names or outcome figures without that permission, which is why representative engagement themes rather than named case studies appear on this site.