Purchasing Portal: “Reverse e-bay” is saving districts big bucks

By Terry Despres and Colleen Akerman

The GetBestBid electronic bidding portal has completed a four-year Development Project, which demonstrated through a six-month pilot significant savings for the participating districts. MSAD 36 began work on the concept in 2004. In 2005 an online bidding portal (GetBestBid.com) was introduced.

Essentially the portal allows schools to enter bids for products that vendors use a reverse auction process that promotes the best price. For example, if a school district needs 50 flat screen computers, they may log on and place it out to bid to a vendor base that is currently in excess of 800 vendors. School districts include precise speculations, delivery information, and a target purchase date.

The vendors bid on the posted item, unaware of the price their competitors offer. School districts price the competitors' offers. The vendors are notified through the web-based system as to the status of their bid (leading/lagging). A bidder may re-enter their bid if they find that they are lagging through the bidding time-line closure. The buyer is able to observe all bid activity. This process has substantially reduced the costs for items in school purchases for the participating pilot schools.

Schools have saved on average 10 percent on laptops, 13 percent on ink cartridges, 24 percent on furniture and equipment and 53 percent on cleaning supplies.

With the cost-savings as the impetus, MSAD 36 initiated the development of a Procurement Service Center . This center is an attempt to reduce costs and demonstrate efficiency required by the reorganization law. The savings can assist districts aiming to reduce facilities and maintenance costs in particular, to meet the requirements in the reorganization law, as well as costs for instructional materials and other supplies across the budget spectrum.

The host district (MSAD 36) is developing 11 regional centers statewide. MSAD 36 (Livermore, Livermore Falls ) will act in the role of vendor developer, offering training services for public schools, and working with the 11 centers. The centers serve as the bidding agent to allow small schools to act as large schools with purchasing through volume. The final decision for accepting and placing purchases remains local, protecting their control for decisions.

With the purchase of GetBestBid by Tyler Technologies, Inc. (ADS/MUNIS), a Maine based company with offices in Bangor and Falmouth Maine providing for the accounting needs of over 75% of Maine schools, a user friendly system has evolved. As a web-based portal, easy utilization is evident for seller/buyer activity. The vendor reaction has produced interesting results with many Maine businesses reporting an awareness of business that they were not engaged in before.

All vendors in a given category receive e-mail notice of bid requests thereby alerting them of a potential sale. This has proven to be a positive outcome for Maine businesses.

A major benefit of a web-based technology such as GetBestBid is that it transcends geographical space, and allows for access by districts to a large vendor competitive atmosphere. The end result as demonstrated by the pilot period is lower pricing for materials needed to operate Maine schools.

The portal system owned by Tyler Technologies, Inc. and operated through Procurement Centers of Public Schools does not create another layer of management since the centers operate out of current district central offices. The net result is efficiency by regional support.

A district may join the GetBestBid system by contacting MSAD 36 through Colleen Akerman (Director of Purchasing/Technology Director) at 207-897-6722 ext. 104 or through email, cakerman@sad36.org . The contact will provide information and your district will be placed with a local center.

Terry Despres is superintendent of MSAD 36 and can be reached at tdespres@sad36.org . Colleen Akerman is director of purchasing/technology director at MSAD 36 and can be reached at cakerman@sad36.org or 207-897-6722, ext. 104.