Raleigh's eProcurement marketplace for negotiated contract and catalog pricing: the City of Raleigh's award-winning eProcurement project linked the functions on an eProcurements system to negotiated catalogs and contracts.

• Author: Bradsher, Allison E.
• Position: Best Practices

The City of Raleigh's eProcurement project won a GFOA Award for Excellence in eGovernment and Technology in 2014.

One process that all government operations have in common is purchasing and paying for a large variety of goods and services--commonly referred to as the procure-to-pay cycle. In 2011, the City of Raleigh Finance Department recognized the need to streamline and improve the efficiency of this process and thus embarked on a project that transformed a system of frequent quotes and bids to a negotiated pricing program.

PROJECT GOALS

The City of Raleigh, North Carolina, recently implemented PeopleSoft and wanted to enhance the buying experience of its departments. The city's overarching objective was to end up with a system that complemented its ERP system, enhancing efficiency and reducing costs. To meet that objective, the project required the functions of an eProcurement system that linked to negotiated catalogs and contracts that featured competitive costs and quick delivery terms.

After extensive discussion and research, the city established five key goals and incorporated them into the project charter:

1. Access to pre-negotiated catalogs in an Amazon.com-style environment.

2. An approval workflow that enabled all city employees to use the system.

3. Electronic transmittal of purchase orders.

4. Electronic transmittal of invoices.

5. Enhanced spending tracking and metrics.

The city selected a software vendor that would address these goals and, after conducting a citywide survey of ideas, named the project "Raleigh's Procurement on Demand"(RPOD).

PROJECT TIMELINE AND STAFF

The project effort took most of 2012, and it went live on December 10 of that year. The finance department chose a dedicated project manager with a unique blend of functional and technical knowledge to the project. The department's controller, who led the project, was responsible for the full, end-to-end procure-to-pay cycle and devoted 80 percent of her time to the project. One of her main responsibilities was to ensure that policies and procedures were changed in ways that would best support the transition to an eProcurement approach and to meet the city's original project goals. The full purchasing and accounts payable teams were also involved in the project, including the design, policy decisions, and testing, which was instrumental to the project's success. The city's information technology (IT) team was heavily involved in the project as well, managing the...