Telecom: The Future of Procurement

India's largest provider of fixed telephony, Bharat Sanchar Nigam has recently deployed e-procurement solution for its tendering process.

Since the BSNL tender for its GSM infrastructure expansion is a high-value tender (original estimates peg it at approximately $2 mn), therefore the security and transparency aspect of the e-procurement process is significant.

Procurement was turning out to be a problem as it was taking time and a debate was on as to why BSNL should not move to a completely e-tendering system.

Therefore BSNL went for a system owned and managed by TCIL, based on the technology/application software of electronic tender.

The software provides transparency to the bidder ensuring that he remains satisfied about the secrecy of his tender quote and that it hasn't been shared with another competitor before the bid-submission. The system nullifies all the doubts and fears of the bidders as it allows the bidders to submit securely encrypted and digitally signed electronic forms, as well as, detailed bids for each envelope (ie, technical envelope and financial envelope).

The bidders are also provided with automatically generated 'comparison charts' which normally takes many weeks for the drudgery to compile.

RK Upadhyay, CMD, BSNL says, "There is a public perception that tendering through manual system is not transparent and efficient. So to build up the public perception into a positive phase, bringing more efficiency, more transparent, and speedier process to the procurement process, we deployed this system of TCIL."

The bid-encryption methodology is such that no doubts can be raised about the bid confidentiality. The bid is encrypted at the bidder's office by the bidder himself with a password-phrase created by the bidder himself, and this password-phrase remains with the bidder till the 'online public tender opening event' (TOE) happens. There is also an option for communication with the password-phrase securely online to BSNL officer during the online TOE itself. There was also a fallback provision in case the bidder decided not to be present online during the online TOE.

Upadhyay believes that although the manual system did not have any problem with the transparency issue, but public confidence went up when BSNL deployed the e-tendering system.

The next task was to find the best software provider in the industry. For this BSNL approached TCIL. "TCIL is from the same ministry and is operational into the telecom industry since 1970s. Secondly, it has an unmatched quality of experts in the fields of telecom and IT, that is why we have chosen the company's services," adds Upadhyay.

With the adoption of TCIL's software, BSNL is now using the TCIL portal for e-procurement. "So far we have not encountered any problem in e-tendering. Now, bidders have no problem or grievance in bidding process because it has become more transparent through electronic portal and the new system has all the security features with it and nobody can muddle with it," adds Upadhyay.

Overall, BSNL seems to be satisfied with the use of TCIL/electronic tender e-procurement system, and is excited about the functionality with the system offers.