SolutionseAuctions
@UK’s eAuctions are procurement tools using online software which allows suppliers to bid for the opportunity to win business being auctioned by an organisation. Suppliers compete with each other by reducing their contract price in order to win the business being offered.
Put simply eAuctions allows buying organisations to identify the lowest sustainable prices that suppliers are willing to accept for their goods and services.
The Solution
eAuctions are best described as traditional auctions backwards. Where you would normally have one seller, here many suppliers compete to offer their products and services to one buyer. Each supplier tries to win the eAuction by lowering their price. At the end of the process the buyer can then award the contract to the supplier who offers the best price.
eAuctions can also have different criteria weighted in different ways. Every supplier will present their offering and usually each offering will differ in terms of quality, delivery, etc. These different aspects can have their importance weighted to suit the buying organisation’s needs. When the eAuction commences the suppliers can then lower their prices and the eAuction software can work out the best value offering based on the different criteria.
eAuction software to run your own eAuction is available from numerous sources, however many public sector clients have found that without the expert knowledge of running eAuctions they have failed to return the savings that are achievable. @UK in association with TradingPartners offers a fully managed service. This end to end process is fully outlined in section 2 and it is important to remember that the eAuction event and the software technology that powers this is only the final step in the process. This process has been proven to deliver exceptional results within the public sector. The table below outlines some recent results.
Some recent Public sector results
| Category | Number of Bids | No. of suppliers | Baseline (£) | Saving (£) | Saving % |
| Telecoms | 80 | 6 | 2,108,262 | 1,180,444 | 56% |
| IT Consumables | 57 | 5 | 1,222,762 | 572,762 | 47% |
| Furniture | 243 | 15 | 247,800 | 129,500 | 52% |
| Temp Labour | 575 | 24 | 1,029,143 | 633,303 | 62% |
| Heating | 115 | 12 | 6,246,509 | 1,753,577 | 28% |
| Office Supplies | 175 | 12 | 6,761,769 | 3,263,056 | 48% |
| IT Hardware | 325 | 11 | 16,069,978 | 4,590,806 | 29% |
| Envrionmental Consultant Services | 129 | 8 | 7,038,850 | 2,119,566 | 30% |
| Couriers | 149 | 6 | 247,701 | 86,305 | 35% |
| 121 | 12 | 2,107,778 | 992,812 | 47% | |
| 2,645 | 165 | 43,080,552 | 15,322,131 | 43% |
TradingPartners
@UK PLC have a strategic agreement with TradingPartners to provide eAuctions. TradingPartners are global leaders in the field of eAuctions and eSourcing.
TradingPartners have been on the OGC framework since 2001 and during this time they have run over 75 eAuctions for more than 37 UK Public Sector organisations. This equates to over £135m worth of spend, they have saved their clients £41.3m which is an average of 31%.