OGC claims large eAuction Savings

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Published: 12 June 2006

OGC claims large eAuction Savings

The latest electronic auction, or eAuction, run by the Procurement Workstream team within the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) claims to have enabled a further £2.7m saving for the taxpayer.

The eAuction, for IT hardware & related products, delivered a 41% reduction in price against the starting figure of £6.5m and was the fifth in a series of collaborations between OGC and buyers from central government, local authorities and the NHS.

OGC Procurement Programmes Director, Richard Abbott said:

"OGC will be continuing to look at leveraging significantly larger and more strategic engagements with the key players in the IT Hardware Market.

The savings realised by this latest eAuction are the best achieved to date.

What makes the results even more attractive is that this eAuction was the first known collaborative cross-sector event run under the new EU Procurement Regulations, which came into being on January 31st 2006".

12 organisations from across the public sector participated and 400 bids were received from 7 suppliers and the eAuction ran for 7 hours 10 minutes.

Auction service providers, Achilles, managed the technical elements of the eAuction on behalf of OGC, while OGC managed the whole of the end-to-end sourcing process for the 12 participants, including:

· preparation of the specifications & Invitation to Tender

· the evaluation process and

· preparation of the eAuction

The public sector organisations taking part in this latest eAuction were:

· Countess of Chester Hospitals Foundation Trusts

· Scope

· Procurement Agency for Essex

· Anchor Trust

· Office of Government Commerce

· Northampton General Hospital Trust

· Mersey Care NHS Trust

· Mid-Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust

· Central Cheshire Primary Care Trust

· East Cheshire NHS Trust

· Finmere C E Primary School

· Barts. and the London Trust

This is believed to be the first collaborative public sector eAuction to utilise "transformational" bidding, which factors in both a suppliers' qualitative evaluations and its pricing.

EAuctions are seen by government as a highly effective method of delivering better value for money in the procurement process.

Among the benefits to both public sector buyers and suppliers are:

· Reduced bureaucracy in public sector procurement

· Attractiveness to SMEs as a way of bidding for Govt. business

· Reduced tender & bid costs to both suppliers and users

· Ease & flexibility of use

· Reduced demands on staff time

· Produces immediate cashable and non-cashable efficiency gains

Further information

OGC eAuctions website

OGC Buying Solutions eAuctions website

OGC: Electronic Reverse Auction Framework Guidance Notes