Beacon officially released E-Bid, an add-on for agencies to receive electronic responses from bidders for RFPs published on the Beacon E-Procurement Suite. Beacon is a solution and service that enables agencies to more easily create, post, distribute, and share solicitations with a large potential vendor market. With Beacon’s E-Bid, bidders upload responses to agency RFPs using a dedicated, secure link provided during the free planholder registration process. This update is included in the latest version 1.3 release of Beacon.
Beacon’s mission is to remove daunting registration processes, frustrations, and download fees. This streamlined process saves bidders time when qualifying and submitting responses to solicitations. In addition, agencies receive fewer phone calls and more bidders by making the registration process straightforward and quick for companies.
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“This service will improve the workflows for procurement professionals so that small, medium, and large agencies can easily formulate and submit clear and accurate solicitations,” said Josh Schwartzbeck, the CTO of GovOptics, the Austin, Texas-based company spearheading the new service. “Agencies have the option to toggle on E-Bid for a particular solicitation or quote at the publishing stage. When an interested party registers to download the bid, they receive a dedicated, secure link to submit their response, which can be modified or edited until the solicitation deadline. When the bid opening deadline passes, agencies receive a notification to download the submissions in a zip file, which are all organized by company name.”
Beacon’s main features include:
* Broadcaster: Agencies publish and distribute their solicitations to more vendors;
* Tracker: Purchasing officers invite, update and monitor solicitation planholders. Automatic alerts notify users of changes or modifications and facilitate other important communications to planholders;
* Beacon RFP Archive: A searchable database of previously published RFP specifications that will help users prepare accurate RFPs (Request for Proposal). In video included within release, see how this tool provides access to 7 million RFPs, the largest and growing repository of RFP specifications in North America.
* API: Users of bid distributors have the ability to integrate with bids posted on Beacon through a free API.
Beacon also offers automatic updates when new solicitations are released. Vendors can simply fill out a form to receive emailed updates and a secure link to download attachments.
Beacon was created to yield more exposure to vendors for agencies and increase response rates on solicitations.
Agencies can now easily communicate with vendors and submit bids without starting from scratch, reducing time waste and submission errors.
“We’re appreciative of our agency partners who participated in the extensive testing of our E-Bid platform,” said Stephen Hetzel, the COO of GovOptics. “We expect to continue our aggressive product roadmap to provide E-Procurement solutions on the market to make the process much easier – for agencies and suppliers. The direct feedback from agencies has fueled our mission.”
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