Stock-control services

Tender description

The Houses of Parliament wish to give notice of a potential contract opportunity on behalf of their respective Catering Departments for a Bicameral Stock Control & Purchasing System. This is to meet the corporate objective of both Houses (Commons and Lords) for providing value for money in the delivery of their catering services through effective and efficient inventory management. Each House is a separate entity in its own right and outlets are owned by one or the other House, not jointly. There is some commonality between the catering ICT systems currently in use in both houses. In the case of Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) this is Micros 3700 RES 5.4 and Artifax Event 4.2.0.21 for Banqueting and Events Management. The two Houses use separate finance systems provided by the same vendor (Agresso) but with different configurations. There is currently no common stock management and purchasing system, and Parliament is therefore seeking a solution that serves the catering departments in both Houses. Any solution should provide integration with the current EPOS, Events Management System and financial systems. In addition, a robust and comprehensive reporting tool is necessary to bring about expected cost savings, specifically in the areas of managing stock levels and reducing waste. The new system must cover the functionality of Recipe Management, Finance Control, Stock Control Management, Purchasing and Contract and Quotation Management. The stock control and purchasing system will be expected to operate in approximately 30 venues and within 5 separate locations across the Parliamentary Estate, including the Palace of Westminster. It will also be expected to provide efficiencies with purchasing, stock counts, menu costing, stock requests, stock on hand levels, electronic invoicing, financial and management reporting that will also provide the ability to analyse performance and trends. There is a need for mobile working and bar coding, as well as the ability for both internal and external users to be able to login to the system in a secure way over the internet. The Houses of Parliament have a ‘cloud first’ policy, but at this stage expressions of interest from suppliers proposing alternative solutions will also be considered. The contract is expected to commence no later than July 2017, with the implementation period beginning with immediate effect, and is expected to be a long-term contract with a minimum three-year period. The total value of the contract is expected to exceed 200 000 GBP. If you are interested in this potential opportunity and would like to be kept informed, please submit your expression of interest via our In-Tend procurement portal (https://in-tendhost.co.uk/parliamentuk/aspx/Home ) by responding to this Prior Information Notice (listed within Tenders > Current). Please note this is a Prior Information Notice and there are no tender documents to download or submit at this stage. However, prospective suppliers are invited to complete and return the market research questionnaire which is available to download via the In-Tend procurement portal, and return by the stated deadline. Please note that the deadline for expressions of interest is 10:00 hours UK time on Monday 20.2.2017.