Riverside County Utilizes Public Purchase
Riverside County Utilizes Public Purchase, a Free & Innovative Service, for Banknote Purchase.
Riverside County has partnered with The Public Group (TPG) to use TPG's online procurement solution, Public Purchase, to post and manage procurement requests. Previously, the County posted these requests on its
website and did not use an automated management tool. The County has benefitted from many features that automate the procurement process, has increased its qualified vendor base, has reduced costs related to
procurement and has seen an increase in competition.
Recently Riverside County posted an RFP (request for proposals) for banknote paper to be used by its vital records department. This highly specialized paper is not available on the open market and is produced and
sold by a limited number of vendors throughout the US. By utilizing Public Purchase, its vendor pre-approval feature and TPG's research team, the County was able to easily communicate its specific needs and increase
the number of qualified vendors competing for its business. Communicating to all interested vendors at one time through the website - www.publicpurchase.com - saved County buyers a significant amount of time.
Issuing addenda (changes to the RFP) saved time and money since no documents had to be printed or mailed. TPG's research team found qualified, interested buyers throughout the US both through its existing vendor
database and through research, and emailed links to the RFP information directly to the interested individuals. This saved the County considerable time and effort and ensured that the process was competitive.
The results were impressive - 10 qualified vendors considered the request, 3 responded and the winning vendor's bid was less than half the cost of the highest bidder's. In the past far fewer vendors were aware of the
bid, and only 1 or 2 vendors responded. Vendors asked questions through Public Purchase and answers were posted on the site as well, ensuring that all vendors had access to the same information at the same time.
Comparing the bids was much easier than it would have been in the past. Public Purchase's automatic tabulation features allowed the County to compare the bids by vendor and by line item without having to print any bids.
TPG's unique business model allows Public Purchase to be available to both agencies and vendors as a free service. To learn more about Public Purchase visit
www.publicpurchase.com
About The Public Group
The Public Group, LLC is a privately held company headquartered in Provo, Utah with offices and personnel in Arizona, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. TPG specializes in Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions
for government agencies in the online auction sector for surplus management - www.publicsurplus.com - and in the online procurement management sector - www.publicpurchase.com. With over 2,200 agency clients and several
hundred thousand vendor and buyer clients, TPG ranks as one of the most successful service providers in the government sector.