ELECTRONIC AUCTIONS AND ELECTRONIC MARKET RESEARCH
As of today, the most effective tool is the eBIT auctions:
An advantage of the online auction is the support of online processes when issuing the invitation to tenders and choosing proposals. It also allows for the purchases at actual prices, increases transparency of supplier relations and solves supervision of town employees responsible for the purchases. The authentication of the user is assured by generating the login and password during the registration process each user has to go through (login and password are generated as a combination of letters and numbers). At each logging in to eBIT portal or eBIT client, the user must use these login data. All communication is encrypted. Participants are presented by code which changes during auction and of course from auction to auction.
eBIT auctions are a huge benefit. It assists in saving procurement costs, decreases expenses for the purchase procedure, shortens the time between announcing a tender and purchase itself, and it restricts the space for corruption to minimum.
The town of Martin, as a public provider, within procurement of goods, building work and chosen services for contracts between 400 – 3,000 EUR including VAT, has acquired software, which ensures economic, transparent and equal treatment of all applicants. Simultaneously it directly enables to choose responsible employees of the Town Hall to make a market research through the website www.martin.ebit.sk, which allows high participation of potential suppliers in the required survey. Benefits of these online surveys, which are performed from October 10, 2010, are the following:
- Entering an offer directly from the office
- Analysis and evaluation by employees
- Online publication in the real time
- Attendance of applicants without the need to register
- Evidence of research
- Application for online monitoring of changes
- Minimal expenses with the publication
Currently ongoing market research is published on the website www.martin.ebit.sk under Market Research. To participate in the electronic survey, there is no obligation to register. Applicant has to be legitimate to supply, respectively provide the object of procurement. Potentially a supplier, who is capable to fulfill settled criteria in an appeal, can react to a published offer by completing an application form. After the identification and contact details are given, the required offer price is automatically displayed in the list of publicized offers. An appeal for submission of a price offer is time-limited. Therefore it is necessary for the participant of the Market research to respond within set time. After termination of the survey, responsible employees of the Town Council choose the best offer. To select the successful candidate, the most important is the lowest price. Subsequently, responsible employee issues an order on the won object, respectively makes contract with the applicant. Results of all terminated and evaluated market research is located under Market Research Archive.
Orders with estimated value of goods between 3,000 EUR including VAT to 30,000 EUR without VAT and a building works in the range from 3,000 EUR including VAT to 120,000 without VAT, are assessed in an electronic auction. In the reasonable cases it is possible to proceed in accordance with Directive about public procurement systems number 043, i.e. make a market research by sending an appeal to submit the price offer to at least three potential applicants. It is also possible to publish the offer on the website.
The purpose of an electronic auction is to arrange the order of the offers by automatic evaluation. Electronic auction follows after the first total evaluation of offers submitted by candidates in written form, the determination of offers order is done by the offer evaluation commission according to the criteria determined in the notice of the procurement and in the competition material. Candidate himself or the contracting authority registers the candidate into the system supporting the electrical auction no later than in 24 hours before the beginning of the auction. System then automatically generates login information and sends it to the candidate’s subscribed e-mail without contacting authority knowing the login data. After the candidate obtains the login data, he can take part in every electronic auction, where he has the permission to do the business.
All of the electronic auctions accompanied with the surveys are published and archived on the web site www.martin.ebit.sk, where they are available for the public to view.
During auction we can not see registered companies names because every participant is presented by a unique code which changes during auction. When the auction is completed the winner is that company which accomplished stricken requirements and offered the best price. When the auction is over, the unique codes change into the names of the companies.
