The SME friendliness tool is a self-assessment tool for departmental use. It has been developed in consultation with representatives of the SME panel, a representative group of stakeholders who help to ensure the government remains in touch with the reality of SME experience in engaging with government.

The overall purpose of this tool is to change how government procures: so that SMEs make up a bigger proportion of the businesses helping government to achieve sustainable outcomes. Specifically, this tool has been designed to:

• describe what SME friendly procurement looks like
• help measure progress towards the aspirational goals of the government to boost SME provision (especially opening up to new SME providers)
• incentivise and support improvement by allowing departments to benchmark against and learn from each other