Within the contemporary world of procurement, e-tendering has emerged as a transformative approach that has revolutionized the way governments and large corporations can procure the best product/services for public use at competitive prices. E-tendering or electronic tendering is the use of online platforms for publishing, inviting, evaluating and completing contracts which offers significant advantages of traditional procurement methods.
By definition, e-tendering is the use of electronic platforms such as a website or a portal that allows bidders and suppliers to manage their procurement needs and submit bids through the platform. It also includes new advertisements bid submissions, evaluation and declaration of winners through a unified platform. In this article, we shall explore how e-tendering has emerged as the favourite and most widely used form of procurement for authorities worldwide gaining significant attention in this topic for prospective bidders to understand.
Conceptualizing E-Tendering:
E-tendering is an amalgamation of various electronic processes conducted during a procurement process by the authority to evaluate and sign a contract with a potential supplier. A unified system of tendering encompasses bid advertisement, pre-bid announcements, addendums, evaluation and the award via a single portal. To achieve this, the ICT infrastructure includes a website that hosts the tenders and its related documents where suppliers can register, download, submit and communicate with the authorities delivering an effective and transparent way of procurement.
The transition from paper based procurement to an electronic procurement is driven from the need to eliminate geographical differences, count for more accountability and transparency in the system and eliminate time lags observed in the traditional form of tendering. The lower cost of deployment is one of the top attractions that influence authorities to shift to this mode of procurement. Due to the obvious advantages that electronic system offers, authorities globally have shifted to electronic procurement portals with the facility to share, download and analyse tender documents and responses.
E-Tender Portals:
There are several modern day electronic tender portals developed by various authorities worldwide with a common goal to simplifying the tendering process. Some websites also offer contractor profiling which works on a cloud computing mechanism where suppliers can get their profiles registered for even more simplified experience. The document sharing is accompanied by communication with the authorities, attending pre-bid conferences online using video conferencing and even virtual seminars conducted by the authorities using digital technologies allowing for a seamless experience.
Such an experience allows bidders to bid more generously for more bids than in a traditional setup as it saves them time and effort in bifurcating the bids and collecting all documents required for submission. It also allows for seamless experience in analysing past data so that they are better prepared for bids in the future. Such portals also give analytics to users for market research purposes and giving them a better understanding for future projects.
Future Ahead:
The information technology arena is rapidly evolving with newer technologies taking over the older ones almost every week leaving procurement officers to match up with the latest ones for dynamic responses. The procurement industry has seen a rapid advancement in recent year with upgrades to e-tender portals allowing users to bid with utmost ease. Although there are UTAUT challenges (User technology acceptance & User interface), procurement managers are expanding their horizons with newer features added to their portals. Innovations such as artificial intelligence and machine learning are giving newer dimensions to the whole analytics game giving companies plenty of research options to study and analyse bids.
It also gives procurement officers plenty of data to work with for preparing the bids in a sophisticated manner. Along with this, there are boutique firms that have gained traction in recent times in the electronic procurement domain. Amazing aggregator services such as Tender Impulse offer complete tender support to prospective bidders for upcoming projects. The portals work as a SaaS platform for exploring newer bids published every day so that companies do not waste time and effort in locating the bids. The landscape for electronic procurement is rapidly changing with fewer authorities throughout the world still opting for paper based tendering procedures.
Therefore, if you’re a company that participates in government tenders and contracts, it is highly unlikely that you do not use a e-tendering platform. Companies need to invest in training and development of their employees who work with e-tendering portals along with taking external help from service providers like Tender Impulse. Doing this shall not only expose them to more bids but also ensure they participate frequently with relative ease thus increasing their chances of success. The future is evolving rapidly and companies need to invest time and effort in modern technologies to keep up with the environment and gain traction amidst the chaos!
