WHAT E-PROCUREMENT DID NOT FIX

A permission is not a seal.

Sealed bidding works on paper, literally. Envelopes stay shut in a box and are opened in front of everyone at a stated hour. Move it to email and the seal is gone, because the person receiving the bids can read them.

• 01

  The administrator can read the table

  Almost everything sold as e-procurement is a permission setting on a database somebody administers. The administrator is not locked out. They are asked not to look.

• 02

  Early bids are worth the most

  The first quote in gives away the range. A buyer who has seen it is negotiating the rest of the round with information the other vendors do not have.

• 03

  Vendors price the risk in

  Twenty years in the trade teaches you to assume the envelope was opened. The padding is not paranoia, it is a rational response to a process that cannot prove otherwise.

• 04

  Losing without seeing why

  A vendor who loses and never learns the winning number cannot tell whether they lost on price or on a relationship. So they stop bidding seriously.