Over the past 9 years, the EU-Supply electronic Complete Tender Management (CTM) platform has been used by over 2000 Contracting Authorities across 8 EU Member States. These include National Systems for the Governments of Norway, Denmark and Lithuania, as well as a range of authorities from very small local authorities to large municipalities, healthcare and educational authorities, ministries as well as utilities in France, United Kingdom, Sweden and Netherlands. Although EU Public Procurement Directives (2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC) provides a common framework, each Member State has slightly differing National legislation and procurement requirements, particularly below EU and any national thresholds. For example in France and the United Kingdom the use of double envelope principle is commonplace. The use of offline encryption of contractor proposals on the contractor’s client machine prior to submission is widespread in France. In Norway e-proposals from contractors must be signed with a qualified digital certificate to be valid. Publication of Contract Notices for tenders above national thresholds to dedicated National Journals is mandatory in Lithuania, Norway and France. To allow the required flexibility and system stability, CTM has sufficient configurability to accommodate these needs for differing legislations, workflows, functional requirements, as well as the different languages and cultural needs. Using CTM ensures compliance to procurement law and a transparent and auditable process. Contracting Authorities see significant process time savings with risk of errors reduced. In addition, significant procurement cost savings are delivered through the use of Spend Aggregation, transparent data level pricing on buyer-centric Spend Lists/Price Schedules, and the use of e-Auctions. This case shares the experiences of implementing a single platform across the European Union, configurable to each Member State and each Authority, without lengthy, costly and risky bespoke systems development. In addition, the factors which enable adoption across organisations with differing requirements are discussed.

Policy Context

EU Public Procurement Directives 2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC, including supplementary directives such as the “Alcatel Directive” (Standstill), as well as the National legislation and procurement law for each Member State. Public Procurement Procedures above EU threshold to include Open procedures, Restricted procedures, Negotiated procedures, Competitive Dialogue, Dynamic Purchasing, Design Contest and the use of e-Auctions. In addition the solution includes procedures below EU threshold and National threshold such as Simplified Procedures and any local procurement procedures.

Description of target users and groups

Any Procurement Professionals from National Bodies, Central Government, Local Authorities, Ministries and Utilities, responsible for pre-award tender management processes, compliance to National Procurement Law, EU Directives and National Public Journals and registers, setting policies and strategies on Procurement.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The EU-Supply Complete Tender Management (CTM) Platform has been used for the past 9 years as a single out of the box solution. Available on a dedicated environment or as Software as a Service (hosted service), the solution enables a complete online end-to-end process for the management of pre-tender, tender, awarding, contract life cycle, and closing, incl Spend Aggregation, Category Management and e-Auctions. Guaranteed to be compliant to all current and future EU Public Procurement directives, CTM is configured online by System Administrators through check-box switches to meet the relevant National Legislation and local procurement workflow procedures, cultural and language preferences. Available in 12 languages, a new language can be added in a matter of weeks. CTM can normally be configured within weeks depending on scope and integration required. The unique EU-Supply Adoption Methodology (EAM) ensures cascaded training and early adoption by users. Integration to commonly used post award and purchase to pay systems is available. Publication to National journals such as DOFFIN, BOAMP, Aanbestedingkalender, Udbudsvagten, Public Procurement Office and National State registers and eSender link directly to the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) is standard. Links to other National Journals e.g. eVergabe, Alego, Hilma are possible.

Technology solution

CTM is available as a platform on Microsoft technology and SQL database. CTM uses XML standards and WebServices to ensure a high degree of interoperability e.g. integration to Post-Award (Purchase-2-Pay) systems and publication to different National Public Registers. Using XSL allows for flexibility of language, semantics, and the visual presentation To save costs, minimise risk and speed up implementation, Authorities are increasingly demanding the delivery of the solution as Software as a Service. They are less concerned about managing the technology themselves, provided there are appropriate Service Level Agreements, monitoring and reporting in place. The CTM architecture is modular, scalable and secure allowing the system to be configured to local procedures, structure and culture of an organisation. For example for smaller authorities, ease-of-use with minimum training is important. For larger Authorities and Ministries, more advanced modules and integration may be required e.g. Single-Sign On with other applications, integration to National State Registers (Virtual Company Dossiers), and the publication to National Tender portals. To aid adoption, CTM can be fine tuned online to reflect the preferred semantics of users e.g. RFT, ITT or RFP may have the same meaning while used by different divisions or entities in the same Member State. Technology choice: Standards-based technology

Main results, benefits and impacts

The benefits go beyond ensuring a fair, auditable and transparent process compliant with National Law and include: 1) Increased efficiency through automation of the process frees up time to allow users to devote more time to creating more value, e.g. through improved tender documents 2) Value for money and cost reduction through the use of e-Auctions, spend aggregation and transparent pricing of authority spend. For example, by extracting real meaningful data from Purchase-2-Pay systems at a data level, more accurate tender specifications can be developed as basis for transparent pricing. Real data also generates more interest from suppliers which typically yields more competitive supplier responses. SKI of DK, and a number of National Health Trusts in the UK have delivered significant cost savings by using spend aggregation based on real spend data in this manner. 3) Contract Management to ensure supplier performance and savings for the duration of the contract, and alert users ahead of contract expiration so renewal is initiated in time. 4) Category Management – The ability to capture and share up to date category knowledge across a large organisation helps users develop better tenders and more quickly. For example NIC in Holland uses Category Management to share requirements between Consultants especially in new categories to develop best practice template requirements which are then readily available across the organisation. 5) Reuse- Enable the use of the latest best practice across the organisation through the use of reusable procedure templates and checklists, Category Management templates, Questionnaires and specifications from tenders issued earlier. 6) Adoption of increasingly emerging new procedures such as dynamic purchasing, design contest and competitive dialogue e.g., dynamic purchasing is used actively by SKI in Denmark. 7) Public Sector Building and Works - Up 50% of Public Sector spend is often in works, building and engineering projects. There are unique requirements in this sector such as complex and large Bills of Quantities and drawings. To reduce risk for all parties of omissions or mistakes in pricing of any amendments, these, as well as large volumes of documents and drawings need to be managed at a data level between the parties and down the supply chain. Cross references between BoQ files and detailed specifications may also be mandatory. e.g. Denmark. 8) Adoption of standards, and ensuring non-discrimination - EU Supply is participating in the European Initiative PEPPOL (Pan European Public Procurement Online) to pilot e-catalogue interoperability across borders.

Return on investment

Return on investment: €500-999,000

Track record of sharing

The EU-Supply case has been shared with over 2000 public sector client organisations and authorities of EU-Supply across Europe. The feedback on the key challenge facing many Authorities seems to be user adoption. How can an Authority introduce a single system quickly which caters for the differing needs of users - some users who may require a simple easy to use system with minimal training, more mature user interested in more sophisticated and comprehensive sourcing tools whilst other users who maybe from the public works background and interested in complex bill of quantities and spend list? The experience to date has been that it is not only possible, but more cost effective to have a single configurable system catering for the different user requirements. A single solution like CTM, configurable to the Authority requirements but localised to individual user needs, speeds up adoption and avoids lengthy and costly implementation timescales. The feedback from Authorities who have successfully adopted the system is that users are beginning to realise other benefits of a single platform e.g. by sharing experiences and best practice knowledge across the organisation through the use of category management templates and questionnaires.

Lessons learnt

1) Ensuring compliance and delivering savings Compliance to current national public procurement laws and EU Directives is a pre-requisite but the system should also be compliant to future changes without additional costs. E-sourcing tools can deliver process time savings and procurement cost reduction. Category management and the ability to manage spend lists, and questionnaires at a data level minimises the risk of non-complete, incompliant responses and yield time savings. E-Auction with spend aggregation and transparent pricing on data level can yield significant direct cost savings. EU-Supply experiences are in line with official estimates (10% of spend or more in most sectors). 2) Reaching real adoption in different sub sectors in a single system Many central Authorities may comprise of different sub-sectors with their own specific requirements. A single platform which matches to each sub-sector’s unique requirements but having the ability to be managed centrally provides the best chances of adoption across sub-sectors, while enabling the sharing of best practices. 3) Cultural Buy-In. Many Authorities face the challenge of user adoption from a “not invented here” perception if there is no real involvement and “buy in” from key users. Each set of users may feel they have a unique set of requirements. For example, infrequent users may want an easy to use system with optional features switched off.. More advanced users may require additional functionality. Users who work predominately in the public sector may want Bill of Quantities. An implementation process which encourages key users to participate in the configuration of the system directly online to their own requirements can help to overcome such barriers. This user empowerment facilitates adoption and ensures a rapid and successful implementation. EU-Supply has successfully implemented solutions in larger organisations with hundreds of users to manage 200-500 tenders per annum online within a few months. Scope: International