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The Texas legislature has passed a bill
allowing municipalities to accept bids via the Internet. Electronic
bidding has been very efficient in reducing errors and time involved in
submitting a bid and reviewing it and provides Lubbock Power & Light with
the potential to obtain better overall value for the taxpayer through
increased efficiencies and reduced pricing. While no system is perfect, we
have found that the use of electronic bid receipt encourages increased
bidder responses. Many of our suppliers have found that it is simply
more convenient to prepare a bid response on-line as opposed to completing,
printing and mailing a copy of the bid.
The Lubbock Power & Light Purchasing
Department provides bid notification and receives selected bids
electronically over the Internet utilizing a comprehensive e-procurement
platform offered by RFP Depot. RFP Depot was selected because
of the strong functionality of their software, the high degree of
flexibility of their system, and their business model which makes it
possible for a local government to adopt the system at no cost, while also
allowing vendors to access the system less expensively than other methods of
tracking and responding to bids.
RFP Depot will distribute automatic email notifications to
member vendors. Vendors will receive notification for goods and/or services
as selected by the vendor during sign up with RFP Depot. RFP Depot's system
will allow vendors to suHTTP/1.1 100 Continue
bmit bids electronically in a secure environment.
While there is no cost for vendors to sign up in the RFP Depot system,
the system is paid for by a 1% transaction fee (on our electronic bids only)
to RFP Depot, which is only paid by the "successful" vendor for bids
accepted electronically and awarded electronically on their system.
RFP Depot will provide free notification of PAPER ONLY bids and
proposals for selected goods and services. PAPER ONLY bids are marked
by this symbol “ ”,
and the 1% fee does not apply to these bids.
This service is free to you, even if you never respond to our
electronic bids.
Vendors who wish to receive all bids, quotations and
proposals without having to contact the Purchasing Department each time
should contact RFP Depot (no registration fee) to be placed on the bidders
list. You may register either on-line at
http://www.rfpdepot.com or by requesting a faxed
registration form by calling (800) 990-9339.
Note: One form of
electronic bidding that you will see on RFPDepot.com is the “reverse
auction”. Many agencies across the State of Texas have been using
reverse auctions with great success for some time now. The benefits of
reverse auctions are not exclusive to the buyer in a dynamic pricing event.
Suppliers can also benefit because they spend less time preparing extensive
paper documents for a static one-chance bid. Suppliers that participate in
reverse auctions benefit by seeing their competitors' bids (without knowing
the identity of the bidder) and having the opportunity to submit counter
offers to better compete in a transparent market environment,
significantly improving their chances to secure the business.
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