Business-to-government (B2G), also known as business-to-public-administration (B2PA) or business-to-public-sector (B2PS) refers to trade between the business sector as a supplier and a government body as a customer playing a major impact in public procurement. Business-to-government also includes the segment of business-to-business (B2B) marketing known as public sector marketing — a form of business-to-business-to-government (B2B2G) phenomenon, which encompasses marketing products and services to various government levels—local, state/provincial, and national—through integrated marketing communications techniques such as strategic public relations, branding, marketing communications, advertising, and web-based communications.
A request for proposal (RFP) is a form of reverse auction that solicits a business proposal by an organisation interested in the procurement of a service or product from potential suppliers. It is usually part of a complex sales process, and made through a bidding process.
A business proposal is a written offer from a seller to a prospective sponsor.
A request for information (RFI) is a common business process whose purpose is to collect written information about the capabilities of various suppliers. Normally it follows a format that can be used for comparative purposes.
E-procurement is a collective term used to refer to a range of technologies which can be used to automate the internal and external processes associated with procurement, strategic sourcing and purchasing.
A purchasing cooperative is a type of cooperative arrangement, often among businesses, to agree to aggregate demand to get lower prices from selected suppliers. Retailers' cooperatives are a form of purchasing cooperative. Cooperatives are often used by government agencies to reduce costs of procurement. Purchasing Cooperatives are used frequently by governmental entities, since they are required to follow laws requiring competitive bidding above certain thresholds. In the United States, counties, municipalities, schools, colleges and universities in the majority of states can sign interlocal agreements or cooperative contracts that allow them to legally use contracts that were procured by another governmental entity. The National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) reported increasing use of cooperative purchasing practices in its 2016 survey of state procurement.
In the United States, the processes of government procurement enable federal, state and local government bodies in the country to acquire goods, services, and interests in real property. Contracting with the federal government or with state and local public bodies enables interested businesses to become suppliers in these markets.
In procurement technology, ERFx is an acronym for electronic request for [x], where x can be Proposal (RFP), Quotation (RFQ), Information (RFI) or Tender (RFT). Other pseudonymous acronyms include ITT and PQQ. All relate to a similar activity: a buyer requesting information from potential suppliers for the purpose of evaluation and comparison. Often this is part of a tendering exercise. The more structured this information is, the easier it is to compare the suppliers. For example, it is more effective to ask 20 multiple choice questions than it is to ask 2 essay questions, as long as suppliers have an opportunity to provide commentary to qualify their answers. Therefore, eRFX software should help the buyer to compare suppliers in useful ways – e.g., apples vs. apples.
Industrial marketing or business-to-business marketing is the marketing of goods and services by one business to another. Industrial goods are those an industry uses to produce an end product from one or more raw material. The term, industrial marketing has largely been replaced by the term B2B marketing.
Bidding is an offer to set a price tag by an individual or business for a product or service or a demand that something be done. Bidding is used to determine the cost or value of something.
A request for quotation (RfQ) is a business process in which a company or public entity requests a quote from a supplier for the purchase of specific products or services. RfQ generally means the same thing as Call for bids (CfB) and Invitation for bid (IfB).
Construction bidding is the process of submitting a proposal (tender) to undertake, or manage the undertaking of a construction project. The process starts with a cost estimate from blueprints and material take offs.
A tender notification is the publication and circulation of procurement opportunities by the procuring entity in various media like: Newspapers, purchasers's own website and government tender bulletin etc. The main objective of wider publicity is to make these opportunities available to a wider supplier community, increase the competition and thus making the procurement process efficient and transparent. In pre-internet era the tenders were published only in the print media but the internet has made it possible to publish the tenders online and make these opportunities available to suppliers globally, on a click of mouse. Though some countries have moved completely to online publication of tender notification, but still there are many countries which are publishing tenders in print media as well. It depends upon the commitment and preparedness of the leadership to make the public procurement efficient and corruption free. The World Bank started bench-marking economies on the basis of legal and regulatory system, which can affect the ability of the suppliers to participate in public procurement process. The latest report from The World Bank - Bench-marking Public Procurement, 2017 assesses 180 economies around the world.
A reverse auction is a type of auction in which the traditional roles of buyer and seller are reversed. Thus, there is one buyer and many potential sellers. In an ordinary auction also known as a forward auction, buyers compete to obtain goods or services by offering increasingly higher prices. In contrast, in a reverse auction, the sellers compete to obtain business from the buyer and prices will typically decrease as the sellers underbid each other.
GSL Mine Counter-Measure Vessels are series of twelve naval ship that were jointly proposed to be built by Goa Shipyard Limited and a yet to be decided TOT partner for the Indian Navy.
Project-75 (India), simply referred to as the P-75(I) program, is a military acquisition initiative affiliated to India's Ministry of Defence (MoD), aimed at the planned procurement of diesel-electric submarines for the Indian Navy (IN). Originally conceived in 1997, the initiative's objective has been to procure a class of six conventionally-powered attack submarines for the Indian Navy Submarine Arm, as a replacement for the force's Sindhughosh-class submarines.
A request for qualifications (RFQ) is a step sometimes used in the formal process of procuring a product or service, for example by a government agency. It is typically used as a screening step to establish a pool of vendors that are then qualified, and thus eligible to submit responses to a request for proposals (RFP). In this two-step process, the response to the RFQ will describe the company or individual's general qualifications to perform a service or supply a product but generally will not include specific details or price proposals.
OpenProcurement is an open source procurement software toolkit that automates procurement processes. It provides tools to design and build a transparent and competitive procurement process backed by strong data collection, electronic documents, and detailed reporting.
Bidder Conferences are common for major projects and programs that are intended to be performed as Cross-Corporate Project Business activities. They are used once the owners of the project have decided to buy work items from the sellers, who may be product vendors and/or service providers. A Bidder Conference reflects the project owners’ intentions that all vendors have an equal understanding of the project’s requirements and the procurement processes before they submit their offers. This ensures that the bidding process is fair to all parties involved.
A request for solution is a commercial document that describes a technological or organizational situation and demands a solution to possible suppliers of this solution. This document is normally issued by the organization which would benefit from the solution. The buying organisation keeps a dialogue with would-be suppliers to determine together the best solution.
