ESM Solutions’ SaaS cloud-based sourcing and purchasing suites streamline the procurement process with an intuitive application that integrates to your general ledger financial system of record. As many companies have learned the hard way, just because you order online does not mean you are getting the best price. ESM Solutions has created a spend management solution for the public sector, giving you easy access to your data with one click. For more information, click here.
Workflow is just one small aspect of effective eProcurement. In addition to supporting a workflow that will reflect your business rules, ESM Solutions offers purchasing and sourcing processes, online access to your approved suppliers, rapid time to benefit and a compelling return on investment – typically in six months or less.
This is an excellent time to implement an eProcurement solution from ESM Solutions. When you upgrade to a new general ledger, it is easy to integrate your new or existing ESM Solutions application with the new GL system, with little to no change to the user interface and your established processes.
ESM Solutions integrates your purchasing with your general ledger financial system, eliminating the need for multiple logins, centralizing the management of account codes for purchases, and controlling company spend across all suppliers. Our application also eliminates the need to click through multiple catalogs to find the best price with our hosted catalog and Level II punchout catalog capabilities.
SaaS-based applications have many more advantages than licensed software. For one, there is no hardware or software installation costs. Costs for upfront and annual subscriptions to SaaS-based applications, like easySourcing and easyPurchase, are much less than paying for licensing at a capital expense, plus continuous maintenance costs. Licensed software also takes longer to install and configure, and requires more time from IT departments to provide maintenance, upgrades and on-going integration. SaaS-based applications are all-around more flexible and intuitive to use.
ESM Solutions’ textbook management solutions help you better control your textbook inventory, thereby reducing the need to purchase additional textbooks. We not only make it easy to buy textbooks by providing visibility to your approved textbook supplier websites, but also enable you to control costs by helping you reuse books in your inventory and purchase used books.
ESM Solutions differs from many sealed bidding systems in the market today. Our approach is to offer a complete electronic capability that can create a sealed bid, quote or request and communicate electronically with your supplier community while facilitating online awards. ESM Solutions offers a complete sourcing solutions suite featuring two sealed bidding tools - one for line item bids and one for catalog discount bids. Our sourcing solutions include Quote (an electronic RFQ tool, ideal when your business rules require evidence of competition) and Project, which has been designed for RFP/RFI creation, communication and award. Our solutions communicate with each other, making awarded bids and quotes visible as electronic catalogs and purchase requisitions within easyPurchase™.
Our experience has shown that the best approach is to focus on your most effective supplier relationships because having too many preferred suppliers can dilute your buying power. Our Professional Services consultants can help you identify which suppliers currently receive the bulk of your company’s spend. We can always add additional suppliers at your request as you expand your product categories or as the number of suppliers in each category increases.
Yes. ESM Solutions will continue to meet the requirements for Payment Card Industry (PCI) Compliance as determined by the PCI Guidelines. As noted by the PCI Standards Council, Compliance is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. The Council "is constantly working to monitor threats and improve industry's means of dealing with them, through enhancements to PCI Security Standards."
ESM Solutions offers something that few other procurement automation companies offer - compelling return on investment, typically in six months or less. Through partnerships with innovative public financing, we can also offer deferred payments out of the current fiscal year and packages that link payment to benefit.
When it comes to Return on Investment, ESM Solutions is at the head of its class, due in large part to a dramatic and immediate effect on hard dollar costs such as printing and postage. Additional ROI comes from better utilization of staff time, compliance with existing contracts and supplier relationships, and the improved oversight and accountability that help organizations meet their mandated reporting requirements.
We have spoken with hundreds of suppliers, including most of the national suppliers that do business with schools and governments. These suppliers participated in sealed bids and paid a percentage bid fee. They understand and appreciate the substantial savings that ESM Solutions makes possible for them. The value they gain far outweighs the bid fees they pay. If you know of specific suppliers with questions, we would be happy to contact them and explain how electronic sealed bidding works.
ESM Solutions has developed our procurement automation solutions to be intuitive for the public sector. We know from experience that easySourcing™ and easyPurchase are easy to deploy, easy to learn and easy to use. Keep in mind that you control the depth and breadth of deployment. Not everyone in your district has to be an end-user.
Many companies we work with deploy ESM Solutions products selectively, for example only to the business office or only to administrators. We also work with schools that deploy our solutions to the teacher’s desktop. The level of deployment is completely under administrative control and can be changed at any time.
ESM Solutions works with thousands of national, regional and local suppliers who do business with public sector entities. A member of our Suppler Management Team can import supplier records from your general ledger system so you can continue purchasing from your local suppliers without interruption. Furthermore, our sourcing solutions give you immediate access to all the suppliers in our database for sealed bids, quotes or other requests.
Any purchase order can be printed for filing or mailing purposes. All transactional data remains available to you online for three years. During that time, you also have online access to all reports that come with our applications.
You can go live with ESM Solutions products in as little as five business days. Because we are a SaaS provider, you can access our solutions through the Internet without having to load any software. You do not need to maintain version control of software or buy hardware. Minimal staff is needed to administer the system. ESM Solutions manages all supplier relationships. We host the software and maintain the system. Plus, we provide phone and email customer support.
Over the years, we have worked with organizations that are extremely centralized, extremely de-centralized and everything in between. No matter how your business processes are structured, it is easy to deploy our eProcurement software for control at any level. At the same time, we provide visibility to supplier contracts that enable you to take full advantage of combined buying power.
Procurement automation solutions are a means to save time and money. It’s all about the ability to make the most of what you have so that more resources can reach the classroom. We would be happy to show you how you can maintain your company’s unique character and still save substantial time and money.
Under the Suppliers tab, click on “Register Now” and you will be brought to the login menu. Click on “eSchoolMall Supplier Registration” to register as a supplier for school districts or educational service agencies. Click on “Mercury Commerce Supplier Registration” to register as a supplier for higher education or state and local governments. Follow the instructions to fill out the various fields with your information and continue until you submit your registration. For a more in depth step-by-step explanation of this process, click here.
After reaching the login screen in the appropriate application, click “Forgot Password?” and proceed to enter your username/email address then click “Submit.” You will receive a notification indicating that your password request has been submitted. You will then receive an email within 90 seconds with a link to reset your password. If you do not see the email within 90 seconds, please check your spam or junk folder. This link will direct you to answer a security question and ask you to provide a new password. After clicking “Submit,” your password will be reset.
The online registration form only takes a few minutes to complete. Once completed, ESM Solutions’ Supplier Management Team will receive the registration request and process it within 48 hours.
It is important to read the Terms and Conditions section on each sourcing event carefully, as this area will contain information relative to any fees that may apply.
Our customers choose the suppliers that they publish their sourcing events to. If a customer selects you to respond to an open bid, you will be able to see that sourcing event. However, our Supplier Marketplace will enable suppliers to actively find and respond to sourcing opportunities as well.
ESM Solutions supports customers nationwide with internet-based procurement tailored specifically for the following organizations: School Districts, Government Agencies, Higher Education Institutions and Private Sector Companies.
Yes. Our applications allow you to continue to work directly with your customers as you do today. In the event that you are invited to participate in a sourcing event that you are not interested in, you can simply decline the invitation.
When you register, you are presented with a listing of classifications that best describe the type of business or service that you provide. All customers can search for you by these classifications and have the opportunity to invite you to sourcing events based on them.
Yes. ESM Solutions has two ways in which supplier catalogs can be presented to customers: hosted catalog and punchout catalog. A hosted catalog gives customers access to their supplier catalog through ESM Solutions’ easyPurchase screen. With a dynamic punchout catalog, the supplier and ESM Solutions work together to create a real-time link between our applications. The user begins in ESM Solutions and then connects to the supplier website for searching and shopping cart creation. Upon checkout, the shopping cart is transferred back to easyPurchase, where it is routed for approval.