D011PA Replacement of Council's E-Procurement System - Sourcing & Contract Management System

An E-Procurement system is fundamental to the work that procurement undertakes and since October 2018, there has been a statutory requirement that requires contracting Authorities to have a full E-procurement tool in place.

The contract for the current procurement system with Proactis (ProContract and Source2Contract) expires in July 2026. This system is currently used not only by ECC but also three of districts (Brentwood, Rochford and Tendring) within the EPP who use the system for all tendering activity. Coupled with this, the remaining districts within the EPP (Braintree, Castle Point and Epping Forest) use BiP Delta with their contract expiring in June 2026. The ambition is to procure solutions that would be used by both ECC and EPP.

Since we last went to market in 2018, system capabilities have moved on significantly as well as our requirements changing. We are no longer solely looking for a sourcing and contract management system but also tools to support spend, social value, climate and KPI reporting and resource management. The latter are currently being managed locally using a combination of Excel and Power BI. In addition, the solutions implemented need to support the procurement team with continuing to optimise resource efficiencies to meet the increased demand for procurement support within the existing resource envelope.

In February 2025, the new Procurement Act 2023 was introduced which overhauled public procurement laws with the aim of creating a more transparent, efficient and competitive procurement process. It introduced new principles and objectives for public contracts, emphasising the importance of value for money, and seeks to provide greater opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To drive transparency in procurement, a significant number of new notices have been introduced and therefore the solution needs to support completion of these whilst limiting the impact on already constrained resource. It is our intention that systems work harder, freeing up capacity for further value add tasks.

We are looking to procure and integrated sourcing and contract management system capable of:

• Providing a fully automated secure on-line tendering solution that is fully compliant with public procurement procedures and can facilitate secure information and document exchange for a range of processes.
• Share data across the whole system.
• Provide the structure to support management of the contracts, including KPI collection, contract compliance, climate and social value reporting.