The New Brunswick Opportunities Network:
Procurement made cost-effective

by Joanne Lynch

With a responsibility for buying over $429 million worth of goods and services each year, the Central Purchasing Branch of the Department of Supply and Services with the Government of New Brunswick has implemented a state-of-the-art e-procurement application.

Called the New Brunswick Opportunities Network (NBON), the system provides end-to-end support to the public procurement process, including electronic requisitions from client departments and external users, electronic ordering from a central warehouse, the central print centre and supply contracts, electronic publication and distribution of tender documents, vendor registration, bid matching, e-bidding, automated bid evaluation and creation of purchase orders and financial commitments.

“We are very proud of the e-government services which have been developed in our province,” said Minister of Supply and Services Bev Harrison. “E-procurement has been one of our most successful endeavours. This year, the NBON system was functionally enhanced to make it easer and more efficient for clients and suppliers to use.”

The goal of the Central Purchasing Branch, Harrison said, is to maximize competition to achieve the best value for the taxpayer, while also ensuring that suppliers have a fair and open opportunity to do business with the province. Currently, about 20% of the bids received by the department are submitted through the NBON system.

The system is a joint effort of the Central Purchasing Branch and OGMA Consulting of Victoria, BC, which has been the supplier for procurement software to the Branch for over a decade. In an evolving working partnership, Branch staff provide OGMA with expertise on detailed functional requirements and testing in exchange for advantageous pricing arrangements. The result is a fully bilingual, e-procurement system that is tailored to the unique requirements of the public sector, which are significantly different than those of most private sector firms.

Previously, the procurement process was conducted using hard copy documents and required significant manual effort and data entry, and was often seen as slow and inefficient.

With e-procurement, buyers in provincial departments can now take advantage of an automated electronic approval process that automatically routes documents through multiple levels of signing authority, access the central stores catalogue and supply contracts, order goods and services over the internet, access help online, and find training in English or French.

Vendors can self-register online and maintain a detailed profile of the goods and services they offer, search and locate tender opportunities, e-bid on opportunities in a secure, confidential environment, see what tenders other vendors have expressed interest in to identify potential partnering opportunities, and access information online after the process is complete.

The vendors also benefit from the system’s capacity to automatically match opportunities to vendor profiles and to notify these matching opportunities electronically. Tender forms, Request for Proposals and related documents such as specifications are available for free, and any inquiries can be answered through a bilingual toll-free service.

What’s in it for the Central Purchasing Branch? Cost savings from the elimination of newspaper advertising and paper distribution of tender documents, significant reductions in the amount of data entry required to capture information (from the use of electronic requisitions and e-bids), and reductions in the volume of hard-copy filing.

Officers in the Branch can now track the procurement process from start to finish, identify potential sources of supply based on the online database of vendor information, track interested vendors to determine if there is sufficient competition. And they can do all this using a complete set of tools in a fully integrated bilingual Windows environment that reduces the need for manual intervention in much of the process and permits automatic generation of spreadsheets and reports for evaluating tender responses

The system, which has been implemented in a phased approach over several years, allows the Branch to delegate further procurement authority to its departmental clients in a secure, controlled environment, enabling senior procurement staff in the Branch to concentrate on larger, high-value complex procurements.

Much of the functionality of NBON is also available to other provincial bodies such as municipalities, universities, hospitals, and crown corporations. Many of these organizations are currently using the tender advertising and distribution portions of the system at no cost. The Department of Transportation recently began posting highway construction tenders, including plans and specifications, and the government expects to make building construction plans and specifications available for download in the near future.

The Branch hopes to use the NBON to create an integrated public sector marketplace in New Brunswick, offering a single access point for vendors wishing to compete for government contracts.

Joanne Lynch is director of the central purchasing section, Department of Supply and Services. The NBON system can be accessed at: www.gnb.ca/3000.