Digital

Supply25: supplier assurance and supply chain management fit for the twenty-first century!

March 18, 2026 by deborahamzil No Comments | Category CivTech, Digital, Innovation, Supply25

Lee Rutherford, Sam Ernstzen and Mark McKenny in the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate and CivTech 9.5 co-sponsors blog about addressing the challenges of procurement. 

Across Scotland, the public sector navigates hundreds of thousands of procurements every year. These range from quick, routine purchases to major, highly complex projects, and the private sector faces a similarly broad and demanding landscape.

It’s vital these procurements are handled consistently, efficiently and securely. Traditional procurement assurance methods can be inefficient and slow creating huge amounts of work for the buying teams as well as barriers for the suppliers – especially Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

Supply chain management is one of the most important digital risk areas, but assessing it properly has long been a challenge. Organisations have often relied on a mix of spreadsheets, emails and one off questionnaires, creating a fragmented and inconsistent process. For suppliers, this results in a confusing landscape of shifting expectations and repetitive form‑filling frequently starting from scratch even when tenders look almost identical.

But not any longer, because Supply25 solves the problem.

The Scottish Government, through its CivTech Scotland Programme, have been working with start-up company AR-SQ Ltd (now trading as Supply25) to bring structure, security, and intelligence to public sector procurement by enabling organisations to assess suppliers in a consistent, collaborative and transparent way. Over an 18-month Pre-Commercial Agreement (PCA), Supply25 and the Scottish Government have developed a platform that initially enables assessment of supplier cyber security and accessibility requirements.

By embedding cyber and accessibility standards directly into the Supply25 platform, organisations can evaluate suppliers against common benchmarks and give clear feedback, which in turn means suppliers can build their understanding of their potential clients and so improve their approach. We are only just beginning with the capabilities Supply25 can offer, with other specialisms including data protection, finance and AI assurance identified as future regimes that can be integrated into the platform. Following cyber security best practice, the platform has been fully penetration tested and the supplier has achieved Cyber Essentials Plus certification.

With Supply25, both buyer and seller can work from a shared playbook – reducing repetition, improving clarity, and raising the bar for assurance. Not to mention creating massive efficiencies for  ever-busy procurement & specialist teams such as Cyber.

Key Benefits

Supply25 has already delivered tangible benefits for procurement, cyber security teams and suppliers, replacing time-consuming manual processes with a structured, secure, and consistent approach to supplier assurance.

• Removes manual and repetitive work: Supply25 replaces spreadsheets and emails with a streamlined digital workflow, saving time and reducing errors.
• Easier, smarter assessments: buyers can use trusted government standards or build custom questionnaires aligned to their own needs.
• Targeted improvement plans: suppliers receive clear feedback when they fall short, helping them align with assurance expectations, levelling the playing field for small and large supplier alike.
• Assessment reusability: suppliers can reuse completed responses, making it easier to participate in future procurements.
• Live dashboards and metrics: buyers gain real-time insight into supplier status, risk exposure, and supply chain resilience.

A successful private beta during 2025 evidenced the benefits and potential of the platform, with all organisations involved in the beta securing full licenses as Supply25 launches more widely. The Scottish Government have committed to funding 40 licenses to public sector organisations and is also available for purchase through flexible routes to market.

And want to know how those early users felt about the whole thing?

“The platform itself is impressive and is one of the best examples I have seen of making complex information accessible and easy to understand. I have also been taken by how collegiate and responsive Supply 25 have been. It is clear they absolutely value customer input, and are committed to making the most bespoke tool they possibly can”

Stephen Kelly – ICT Manager, Transport Scotland

“Since we started working with Supply25 we’ve been really impressed with their approach to establishing our requirements. The new Supply25 platform has a really fresh look and feel to it… [and] greatly simplifies the administration we need to do during procurements.”

Chris Turnbull, NHS

Intrigued, and want to hear more?

We would love to hear from you! Please feel free to contact Supply25 directly at alexis@supply25.com or contact Lee.Rutherford@gov.scot, Samantha.Ernstzen@gov.scot or Mark.McKenny@gov.scot.

Tags: CivTech, digital, Digital Strategy for Scotland, Public Sector, The Scottish Government

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