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TO: Mayor Richard C. Irvin
FROM: Jolene Coulter, Director of Purchasing
DATE: November 12, 2024
SUBJECT:
A resolution to execute a contract with Vertosoft for the purchase of OpenGov E-Procurement and Contract Management Systems to modernize and standardize procurement functions across the City.
PURPOSE:
The Purchasing Division wishes to move to an E-Procurement and Contract Management system which will centralize the City's procurement process, create more competition, and mitigate risk with approved templates and contracts.
BACKGROUND:
Currently, the City creates and maintains all the procurements and contracts manually. Staff posts all actual documents, advertisements published in the newspaper, addendums, tabulations and award information manually to the City's website and DemandStar along with updating several excel spreadsheets for tracking.
Informal Solicitations were being posted/managed on a separate GovSpend site where only items $5,000-$25,000 were being posted. This site actually charges the City an annual fee to use.
While each project manager/division is supposed to manage and monitor their multi-year agreements, the Purchasing staff is also monitoring terms to ensure renewals or bids are published timely to allow for review, selection and Committee/Council approval process if required.
The Purchasing Division, with the participation of Public Works/Engineering, Central Facilities and Information Technology reviewed the capabilities of 21 different E-Procurement systems and narrowed the selection to five who had current cooperative contracts (Appian, Bonfire, CobbleStone, OpenGov and Oracle). Additional information was requested to ensure they were able to provide government based product, supplier engagement, vendor portal, informal solicitations, AI based tools, solicitation development and evaluation and award management. Four of the vendors responded, demonstrations were set up and after a consensus of staff a second more i...
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