e-Commerce Solution

Commercial Services is one of the largest trading organisations of its kind in Europe with a turnover in excess of £600 million and employing over 700 people from its base in Kent. Tracing its roots back to 1902, as an education stores department for Kent County Council, Commercial Services has subsequently grown organically to supply an ever-increasing range of best value goods and services to other publicly funded organisations.

These include local government, education establishments, the care sector and the emergency services. KCS is a trading unit of Commercial Services and provides a purchasing, warehousing and distribution service to a wide ranging customer base within local government and associated public bodies in Kent, neighbouring counties and across the UK.

Kent County Council (the Council) is the largest local authority in England covering an area of 3,500 square kilometres. It has an annual expenditure of over £1bn on goods and services and a population of 1.3m.

The Council provides a wide range of personal and strategic services on behalf of its residents, operating in partnership with 12 district councils and 289 parish/town councils. KCS currently has 7000 active customers and 15,000 products.

The Last 5 years has seen consistent growth moving from £39.6m in 2009/10 to £57m 2014/15, however only 3% of these orders are currently placed through the current e-commerce solution. Sales growth targets are aimed at 12% per annum each year, however the aim is to grow the e-commerce platform orders to 75% by the end of the next 5 years utilising a state of the art Open source e-commerce solution.

KCS wishes to create a Contract for the supply and delivery of an e-commerce Platform The Contracting Authority shall be Commercial Services Kent Ltd a wholly owned business of Kent County Council. This opportunity will be completed electronically via ProContract, a site run by Due North.

Interested organisations should go to www.kentbusinessportal.org.uk to register and express interest. Once you have successfully expressed interest via the portal you will be sent an email directing you to the ProContract site from which you will be able to access and download the invitation to tender documentation and any other relevant information.

This email should be retained, as it will contain your direct link to the ProContract portal, for information purposes only the link is www.kentbusinessportal.org.uk/procontract/supplier.nsf DO NOT USE THIS LINK NOW. Tenderers should also note that final submissions must be made via ProContract, no other submission route is permitted.

Failure to follow this path will result in the tender submission being disregarded. ALL DOCUMENTS PERTAINING TO THIS OPPORTUNITY WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD VIA THE PROCONTRACT PORTAL FROM THE OUTSET. Please ensure you are able to download all files immediately after accessing the ProContract portal.