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Fast Flexible Secure

OPEN

Educational institutions have widely distributed eProcurement requirements and limited support resources. Some manual procurement procedures are costly, slow, opaque and error prone. Collaboration across schools can sometimes be difficult and time consuming. Educational institutions are under pressure to adopt electronic procurement and generate more value by collaborating with other buyers. Unfortunately, most electronic marketplaces are ill equipped to handle the unique needs of schools. They lack access to public sector collaborative contracts, have enabled a limited number of school suppliers, and in some cases do not possess the financial stability to ensure continuity of service for this critical procurement function.

OPEN is different. OPEN (Online Procurement for Educational Needs) is the national programme that delivers better procurement in schools. OPEN is managed by the Educational Procurement Centre (EPC) of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). ProcServe provides the OPEN portal, procurement solutions and electronic marketplace as a managed service that makes it easier for schools to buy from their suppliers. OPEN allows users to easily and securely access their local electronic trading contracts and electronic catalogues for goods and services, as well as access regional and national contracts that could offer increased value for money. Through OPEN, schools can transact with any of their suppliers, local or global, large or small, new or legacy. The platform for OPEN has been approved by HM Treasury and DCSF after an extensive evaluation, including confirmation of the solution’s financial viability. As a result, educational organisations can choose OPEN with confidence and are not required to go through a time consuming tender process.

OPEN allows you to procure on your terms.

Fast
  • Turn on the system quickly without undertaking a public tender process
  • Immediate access to collaborative contracts
  • Immediate access to suppliers already on OPEN
  • Registration of new suppliers on OPEN in minutes
  • Leverage existing ERP and P2P infrastructure
Flexible
  • Marketplace configurations that meet unique buying organisation needs, including integration options and transaction options
  • Options for individually branded marketplaces for buying organisations
  • Hosted architecture that changes with changing business requirements
Secure
  • Compliant with Infosec Government Security Standard No 1, Impact Level 2
  • Data centre has ISO 27001 Information Security Management accreditation
  • Fully redundant disaster recovery site
  • 128 bit data encryption
OPEN
 
Department for Children, Schools and Families
 

"We at the Department for Children, Schools and Families feel that [OPEN] will offer real choice and collaborative buying potential to schools."

Former Deputy Commercial Director & Head of Educational Procurement Centre Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)

 

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