Reverse Auctions are an easy way to save significantly on goods and services that are commonly used by your agency. Reverse Auctions are online, strategic sourcing events where the role of buyers and sellers are reversed. Watch the webinar here: http://www.bidsync.com/resources/webinar/2012-05-31-reverse-auction/

1. Reverse Auctions
Webinar Series
May 31, 2012

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• What are Reverse Auctions?
• What are the benefits of Reverse Auctions?
• Savings using BidSync

3. Procurement issues facing government
• Don’t get best prices or value for money
• Unsustainable growth in spend
– More demand, restricted budgets
• Overspend due to uncompetitive bidding
environment

4. • March 2009
– President directed agencies (federal) to save $40
billion in contracting annually by FY 2011
– Initiative promoted to adopt fiscally responsible
acquisition practices
– Reduced average spend from 12% to 4% in FY
2009 = $19 billion in savings for FY 2010
– One of the strategic sourcing methods = Web-
based electronic Reverse Auctions

5. What is a Reverse Auction?
• Roles of buyers and vendors/suppliers are
reversed
• Prices decrease as vendors/suppliers underbid
each other
• Supplier name is kept confidential
• Real time bidding
• Extremely successful for procuring
commodities, rather than services

6. Benefits of Reverse Auctions
• Obtain more favorable pricing from vendors from
our national database of over 700,000 vendors.
• Significantly reduce your sourcing/bidding cycle
• Vendors have immediate access to the current
lowest offer
• Lower overall supply costs
• Vendors don’t need to wonder if their bid was
too high or too low
• Lessens the time it takes vendors to win business.

7. How can Reverse Auctions save me
money?
• In addition to robust reporting and audit trail capabilities, our
Reverse Auction functionality allows agencies to:
• Define and configure bid ending parameters
• Allow bidding activity to be viewed in real-time
• Competitive bidding environment by displaying other vendors’
offers
• Tiered or multi-step bidding and pre-bid document facilitation
• System-generated event notifications and electronic offer
submission
• Post award detailed tabulation and reports
• Effortless electronic awarding

8. Agency Benefits
• Promotes a severe competitive bidding
environment = substantial savings
• Purchase of commercial commodities that
have:
– Well-defined specifications
– Universally accepted standards
– Bulk purchases
– Products with an established, qualified base of
suppliers

9. Vendor Benefits
• Bidders don’t just get one shot at getting the
business
– Re-bidding by lowering their price depending on their
competition until they are successful or unwilling to
go any lower to continue in the process.
– Your agency is the winner!!
• Your agency can still evaluate the bidder per
business rules
• BAFO use in reverse auctions – after initial RFI
pre-qualifying bidders and market research

10. Examples of savings on BidSync
• Bids released on the system since December of 2001 – 956 Reverse Auctions
• Over $25.3M awarded on the system since 2003 by agencies across the
country
• An average savings of $23,000 on goods and services including:
– IT/Computer
– copy paper
– construction related goods
– food
– office supplies
– law enforcement/safety support materials
– vehicles
• Suppliers able to place price offers with an average discount of over $5,700
• Saved almost $1M in purchasing flour for prison system – Maricopa County,
AZ
• Savings of almost $6M on life insurance

11. Average Savings by Agency Type
– School Districts & Universities:
• Savings of average of $9,800 on IT/computer, office & classroom supplies, copy paper
• Average of over 5 suppliers placing legitimate offers
• Over $5M awarded on the system since 2003
– Counties
• Savings of average of $24,000 on IT/computer, office & classroom supplies, copy paper
• Average of over 7 suppliers placing legitimate offers
• Over $5.8M awarded on the system since 2003
– Cities & Towns
• Savings of average of over $30,000 on IT/computer, office & classroom supplies, copy
paper
• Average of over 5 suppliers placing legitimate offers
• Over $4.9M awarded on the system since 2003
– States
• Savings of average of over $18,000 on IT/computer, office & classroom supplies, copy
paper
• Average of over 4 suppliers placing legitimate offers
• Over $9.3M awarded on the system since 2003
*Awarded on BidSync since 2003

12. Average Savings by Industry
– Computer/IT/Electronics
• Over $2.9M awarded - savings on an average of $17,000
– Copy Paper
• Over $13M awarded - savings on an average of over $23,900
– Construction & street maintenance related materials
• Over $3.9M awarded - savings on an average of over $37,000
– Office/school supplies
• Almost $180,000 awarded - savings on an average of over $4,300
– Law enforcement/safety support materials
• Over $225,000 awarded - savings on an average of over $2,600
– Landscaping & maintenance materials
• Over $577,000 awarded - savings on an average of over $5,300
– Vehicles/trailers
• Over $67,000 awarded - savings on an average of over $3,200
*Awarded on BidSync since 2003

13. Some Agencies using BidSync for
Reverse Auctions
• Maricopa County, AZ
• State of Connecticut
– Department of Administrative Services
• State of Utah
• Contra Costa County, CA
• Collin County, TX
• City of Lubbock, TX
• City of Grand Prairie, TX
• Alpine School District, UT
• Idaho Falls School District, ID

14. Other Examples
• Department of General Services, State of Pennsylvania
– They were the first government entity in the nation to use Reverse
Auctions.
– They purchased:
• Rock salt for roads achieving a $2.5 million savings on a $30 million purchase
(about an 8 percent reduction);
• Rolls of aluminum for license plates at a 10 percent savings; and
• Coal to be used for heating state buildings
– While it cost Pennsylvania $1.3 million in fees, they saved $8.5 million!
• Homeland Security Department as an important new user of
reverse auctions.
– Department’s acquisition officials held more than 2,000 such
procurements in fiscal 2010.
• Naval Supply Systems Command
– Savings have ranged from 2-25%, with a weighted average of 18%.

15. Bid Detail Overview
Bid History
Agency View: Bid detail

16. Line Item Overview
c
Line Item
Overview –
bidding activity
(graphical view)
Agency View: Bid detail

17. Vendor View: Bid detail page

18. Vendor view: Placing an offer

19. Vendor view: Reviewing an offer

20. Vendor view: Confirmation of an
offer

21. BidSync Security Standards
• SAS70 type II certification and audit processes
• Disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place for BidSync headquarters
and support services
• Customer Solutions ticket history available for review via the BidSync portal
• Physical Security
– Data center access limited to data center technicians
– Biometric scanning for controlled data center access
– Security camera monitoring at all data center locations
– 24 x 7 onsite staff provides additional protection against unauthorized entry
– Additional offsite backup and recovery measures to enhance fail-safe redundancy efforts
• System Security
– System patching configured to provide ongoing protection from exploits
– All communications and data transfers are encrypted using high-grade encryption practices
– Access to BidSync’s on-demand platform of applications is only available via secure sessions
(https) and only via authenticated login and password.

22. About BidSync
• Since 1999
• Over 1,000 registered agencies
• Over 700,000 vendors in our database
• Headquarters in American Fork, Utah
• SaaS-deployed eProcurement solutions
– BidSync eProcure™
– BidSync Builder™
– BidSync ProcurePointe™

23. Questions?