Electronic procurement system for an engineering consultancy firm

Web based Electronic Tendering system not only reduced the cycle time of tendering process but also the transaction cost for an Engineering Consultancy firm.

A large public sector engineering consultancy firm offers its consultancy services and undertake turnkey engineering projects worldwide. These large projects are several times subcontracted to different vendors through the tendering process.

Objective

The firm experienced that the present tendering process requires huge manual work and hence cause unnecessary delays in starting up projects. It was very much essential for the firm to minimise the time required for the tendering process.

Solution

Leveraging the web technology, MeCOM created an environment that would allow the consultancy firm and vendors to communicate with each other electronically. ‘Electronic Tendering System’ (ETS) is implemented by adapting the technology of Electronic Commerce. It is a web based application that address to contractual stage of the tendering process. It allows the firm and vendors to interact each other at their own pace using a browser on a PC.

The user needs to login to our EC Centre to access ETS. After authentication, the firm is allowed to upload the tender document that would initiate the tendering process. The targeted vendors are electronically informed to respond to the tender. Vendors would then login, download the required tender document, work offline to bid, and later respond by uploading the files in any required format. The vendor responses and tender documents are stored at our EC Centre. The firm is allowed to download the tender responses only after the specified due date and time. The new system allows all the transactions involved in the whole process starting from creating a tender to informing to the winner of tender to perform electronically.

Some key features of ETS :

1. Provides user friendly, interactive web interface
2. Authenticates the consultancy and vendors with username and password
3. Security measures are implemented for safe and secure tendering transactions
4. A history of transactions is maintained both for the consultancy firm and vendors
5. Capability of viewing relevant transaction logs on the browser
6. Intimation to vendors is carried out both by email and fax

Results

The solution offers efficient and cost-effective tendering system. The Electronic Tendering System helped the firm to start subcontracting the engineering projects through tendering process without delays.

Some of the Key benefits

1. Tremendously reduced the time taken for tendering process.
2. Improved user productivity in this multivendor environment.
3. Reduced the transaction cost by more than 60% that is involved in the tendering process.