Build Better Solicitations
Today, many purchasing leaders are hanging up their paper-filled, manual sourcing processes for a streamlined, automated online solution. It’s a win for everyone. Once making the move to a digital solution, there are a few best practices to follow to make sure the solicitations you release are optimized for the e-procurement experience. Read on for our top three e-procurement solicitation development tips.
3 Solicitation Development Tips
1. Give easy access to the bid documents.
Don’t prioritize collecting pageviews over accessible documents. At the end of the day, we want to make this experience as easy as possible for suppliers to ultimately increase responses. Making bidders sign in to view the RFx can decrease the number of submissions you receive. Even worse: Making suppliers pay to submit. This has a big impact on smaller businesses who may not be able to justify the cost. So, keep the document in an easy-to-find spot on your website.
2. Be specific about file format.
PDF. DOC. XLS. PPT. The options for file formats can feel endless. State the exact file format for all documents in the vendor response format section of your solicitation. That way, you get what you need from vendors with their first submission. Just like this: “This should be a one-page PDF.” or “Upload both Excel and PDF formats.” Plus, you’ll have less questions to answer from bidders and a unified format across all vendor responses to make your evaluation teams happier.
3. Consider electronic only.
If your policies allow, skip the manual submission option. If you offer both a digital and paper submission process, you’re creating an exponential amount of additional work for your team. Plus, choosing to move the process completely online eliminates stacks of paper to review and gives your team the opportunity to collaborate in an online platform.
Streamline and Automate Solicitation Development with Eprocurement
A critical step to improving the consistency and readability of your electronic solicitations is making the upgrade to a solicitation assembly automation tool like OpenGov Procurement. OpenGov Procurement is the most collaborative procurement suite built for modern government. Providing end-to-end automation across solicitation development, supplier interactions, and proposal evaluations, OpenGov makes procurement more enjoyable and transparent for everyone involved. To learn more about how it can improve your processes, request a demo for your personalized walkthrough.
In the meantime, learn more about solicitation development, in our ebook, 5 Tips for Better Solicitation Development.
Category: Procurement