E TENDERING SYSTEM - PRELIMINARY MARKET ENGAGEMENT

Tender description

Wokingham Borough Council (WBC) is undertaking a pre-market engagement exercise regarding a replacement e-tendering system. This exercise is intended to provide capable suppliers with early visibility of the Council’s requirements and to gather information on the types of solutions available, their capabilities, limitations, innovation, implementation approach, timescales, integration options and commercial models. This will assist and inform the Council’s understanding of market capability and any future scope, requirements, specification and procurement approach. A Market Engagement Questionnaire has been provided and requires completion by all suppliers who express an interest and are willing to provide responses to help guide this exercise and inform the Council’s consideration of potential replacement e-tendering system options. All Expressions of Interest and completed questionnaires should be submitted via the ProContract portal. The Council's current eTendering platform is operated in accordance with recognised security, governance and confidentiality standards and includes controls designed to protect procurement information. In addition, the system maintains a comprehensive audit trail, enabling the Council to monitor access to procurement data. However, we recognise that some suppliers may be uncomfortable submitting commercially sensitive information through a platform operated by the incumbent provider. Therefore, suppliers may password-protect any questionnaire submitted via the messaging portal. Where password protection is used, the password should be sent separately by email to matthew.mason@wokingham.gov.uk. To maintain a consistent and auditable procurement process, the EOI and questionnaire documents themselves must still be submitted through the portal by the stated deadline. The solution is expected to provide an end-to-end e-tendering system to support procurement activity, supplier engagement, tender publication, evaluation, award, transparency requirements, contract register functionality and contract management activity. Keywords: SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE, E-TENDERING, CONTRACT, TENDER MANAGEMENT, PROCUREMENT, PORTAL