Essex County Council Spearheads Local Government eSourcing w...

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BravoSolution www.bravosolution.com , the international leader in Supply Management software and services, today announces that Essex County Council has deployed BravoSolution s flexible eSourcing solution via an online portal. The Council has undertaken one of the largest local government eSourcing projects to date in order to deliver better value to residents throughout the county.

The portal, www.essex.bravosolution.com, is a suite of collaborative, web-based tools that enables procurement professionals within the council as well as their suppliers to conduct the procurement lifecycle process over the Internet. These strategic activities include defining the requirements and specifications for tendering and supplier selection, as well as contract award and management. The portal is open to all levels, from County to Borough and District Councils.

To date, the portal has procured contracts in excess of 450 million, engaged with almost 1,000 suppliers and prevented the multiple-version printing of nearly 2,000 documents due to moving the tender process online. From an initial 11 users actively running projects earlier this year, the council hopes to nearly quadruple the number of adopters by Christmas 2008.

The authority has also extended core activities such as eAuctions and eTendering to add Vendor and Contract Management, gaining a stronger hold over supplier relationships and heightened visibility of contract risk. The portal is also aiding reporting by providing absolute transparency throughout the tender management and evaluation process. Plus, another positive outcome of this is that it reduces the cost of the procurement process, making it easier for suppliers, especially small businesses, to respond.

The portal deployed by BravoSolution has been a great success to date in delivering improved value to residents, says Ali Brown, Head of eSourcing for Essex County Council. The portal has also made it easier for smaller or more diverse suppliers to tender for and win contracts, which is something that we as a council are keen to encourage. It allows a supplier to register much of their pre-qualification data once and once only, reducing the costly time overhead of suppliers bidding for multiple contracts, which can be a barrier to smaller businesses.
In addition, as some contracts are awarded in parts, the playing field between large organisations and those with smaller capacity is flattened to allow for the best possible contract awards all round, delivering optimum value to residents within the county.

The portal we have deployed for Essex County Council is further proof that the benefits of eSourcing can be realised at all levels of the UK public sector, says Nader Sabbaghian, Managing Director UK and CEO of BravoSolution. We are seeing an increasing demand for our services from councils all over the country. Essex has shown how their residents are directly benefiting from greater efficiency as well as the savings that will be reinvested into the community to help improve a number of different services.

Software:
OEM SOFTWARE