A clinician can love your product and still be unable to purchase it. Frameworks are the mechanism that turns interest into a purchase order. Getting on the right one, at the right time, is one of the cheapest pieces of leverage available to a small company, and one of the most commonly left until too late.
Being on a framework means somebody has already checked you. Your accounts, your insurance, your security posture, your policies, your ability to deliver. A trust buying through a framework is buying from a pool that has been assessed, so their own process gets shorter and their own risk gets smaller.
That is the part most suppliers understand. The part they miss is what it signals. An unlisted supplier asks a buyer to take a personal risk on an unknown company. A listed one has been externally validated by an organisation the buyer already trusts. For an early stage company with no brand and a short trading history, that borrowed credibility is worth more than any amount of marketing.
There is also a hard commercial edge to it. NHS England tells buyers to use endorsed framework agreements for all digital buying, and is explicit that using non-endorsed routes will ordinarily prevent the buying organisation from accessing shared or central funding for those services, with any resulting risk or cost falling on them alone.
Read that again from your buyer's side. If you are not on an endorsed route, you are not just harder to buy. You may be asking your customer to give up their funding in order to buy you. Very few clinical champions will win that argument internally, however much they like the product.
Off framework, you are asking your buyer to take a personal risk. On one, you are a pre-approved option.
NHS England has grouped digital services into six pillars covering thirty two separate framework agreements. There are national routes, regional hubs, and sector specific agreements, several of which overlap for the same product.
On top of that the ground moved recently. The Procurement Act 2023 introduced three different vehicles: closed frameworks that shut for their term, open frameworks that reopen periodically, and dynamic markets that accept new suppliers at any time. Crown Commercial Service became the Government Commercial Agency in April 2026. Frameworks have been consolidated, renamed and replaced.
So the honest answer to which framework you should be on is that it depends on what you sell and who buys it, and that anyone who answers it in one word has not asked enough questions.
A rough map rather than advice. Which of these actually applies depends on your product, your claims and where your buyers sit.
These accept new suppliers at any time rather than opening in windows, so there is no waiting for a round. Under the Procurement Act 2023 a dynamic market can add suppliers continuously, which makes it the realistic first route for a small company.
The Buying Catalogue is where ICBs and practices look for primary care systems. If your product sits in or alongside the GP record, being absent from it is a real commercial problem, not just a paperwork gap.
TIF is for public cloud hosted, browser based products built around open APIs that deliver the six core functions of an electronic health record. A narrow door, and only relevant if you are replacing a core system rather than adding to one.
The broadest and most forgiving route. Roughly 40 percent of historic G-Cloud spend has gone to SMEs. It is a catalogue rather than a competition, so you are listed rather than shortlisted.
A single lot covering EPR, PAS, radiology, pathology, shared care records, pharmacy and specialist clinical solutions, with a catalogue that lets suppliers add products during the term. Version 2.0 is being prepared.
For selling teams and specialists rather than software. Worth knowing about if part of your revenue is implementation and support.
Framework windows are the part companies miss. Miss a refresh and you can wait years for the next one, which is long enough to matter to a company with eighteen months of runway.
The first G-Cloud under the Procurement Act 2023, and an open framework, meaning it reopens periodically for new suppliers rather than shutting for its full term. Roughly 18 months after go-live is the expected first reopening. Cyber Essentials is mandatory across all lots, with Cyber Essentials Plus on some.
Every call-off contract under G-Cloud 14 must be signed before that date. Work does not transfer between frameworks, so anything that will not complete in time has to run under G-Cloud 15 instead.
The current agreement carries 81 suppliers and is worth around 2 billion pounds. A version 2.0 is being prepared, and a framework refresh is the single best moment for a new supplier to get on.
TS3 has been closed to new entrants pending its replacement. Relevant only if you are chasing larger IT and support contracts.
Rather than one open date, capabilities are added to the catalogue roadmap over time. The thing to watch is the roadmap itself, not a tender notice.
Under the Procurement Act 2023, pipeline notices give roughly twelve months of advance visibility of upcoming framework competitions. This is the mechanism that turns framework timing from luck into planning, and almost nobody uses it.
Dates move. Everything here was accurate when written and should be checked against Find a Tender and the Government Commercial Agency before you plan around it.
Framework applications are not hard so much as long, repetitive and unforgiving about evidence. Having been onboarded to multiple frameworks over the years, for multiple products, we know which questions matter, which evidence takes weeks to obtain, and which frameworks are not worth your time.
Most companies need one or two, not six. We map your product against the routes your buyers actually use and tell you which to ignore.
Cyber Essentials, DSPT, DTAC, insurance, accounts, policies. Applications fail on missing evidence far more often than on weak answers, and most of it takes weeks to obtain.
Pipeline notices, framework refreshes and reopening dates, monitored so you are ready before a window opens rather than finding out after it closed.
We have been through this repeatedly, for multiple products and multiple frameworks. The questions repeat, and knowing what a good answer looks like is most of the work.
Being listed is not the same as being bought. Catalogue entries, service descriptions and pricing decide whether a buyer finds you once you are on.
Tell us what you sell and who has said they want it. We will tell you which routes are worth your time and which are a distraction.