Processing tenders electronically has never been easier... there are many electronic portals which facilitate the entire tender lifecycle from soliciting to receipt of bids to evaluation and award.
But these electronic bid portals can be pricey so may not be immediately accessible to smaller businesses. In such instance, a simple online process can be employed.
Read on for a Quick Tip to preserve the sanctity of your online bid process without the high cost of electronic bid portals.
STEP 1
Set up a dedicated email address for receiving bids such as bids@xyz.com. Replace xyz with your company or department name.
Instruct your bidders to submit their bids only to this email address. Instructions must specify that no other email address should be put in copy of the email which contains their bid. Bidders may send a separate email to the buyer(s) to confirm that they have submitted their bid to the dedicated email address.
STEP 2
Implement 'two-way password' where two people have to put in the password to access the email. This is achieved by each person having one half of the password, each unknown to the other.
For instance, the password to access a bid email is BID321XX. Susan has one half: BID3 while John has the other half: 21XX. Susan does not know John's password; she only knows she needs to put in her password first. John does not know Susan's password but he puts in his own password after she has put hers in. The email can only be accessed when both Susan and John have put in both their passwords.
STEP 3
Institute a process whereby the email is only accessed after the bid deadline i.e. after all bid submissions have been received.
The date and time of access is documented and signed off by the two people with the password.
With this approach, the sanctity of the bid process is preserved since no single person can access the bids before the deadline.
Need some more info on running effective tenders?
Comments