ProColombia, Gobierno de Colombia
Platform specialised in detecting international business opportunities for Colombian companies
The project
Within the framework of the "Support Programme for the Diversification and Internationalisation of the Colombian Economy", financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Colombian Government was implementing the component "Export Promotion of Knowledge-Based Services (KBS)", which represents a strong commitment by the National Government to support the export capacity of the Knowledge-Based Services sectors.
Colombia has a portfolio of exporting companies in the architectural and engineering services sector, with experience, capacity and interest in providing specialised services to governments and public entities in other countries in the region.
While Latin American countries have centralised or entity-based electronic procurement systems, the process of finding opportunities for exporters that ProColombia's offices had been carrying out was a mechanical and routine process of searching, selecting, prioritising, organising and reporting on bidding processes.
The need then arose to improve access to business opportunities for Colombian companies through the development of a technological tool that would centralise tenders and organise opportunities by country, type of service, speciality, deadline for submission of proposals and amount, in addition to carrying out an automated periodic mapping of opportunities from the different state procurement platforms, initially Chile, Peru and Central America, also allowing for the manual incorporation of opportunities for other markets.
Challenges
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Strengthening the export capacity of the KBS sectors in order to standardise processes, raise productivity, sophisticate supply and align it with market needs -
Providing an intuitive tool for Colombian companies to access, participate in and follow up on business opportunities -
Optimising, automating and standardising the process of searching for tenders abroad -
Centralising tenders in a single technological tool that allows ProColombia's advisors to follow up and support Colombian exporting companies in a more secure and agile way
The solution
Izertis proposed a solution based on Drupal 9 that connects through web services to tender platforms in different countries. In addition, the platform allows to import through CSV files any tender of those countries that do not have web services to connect to.
The service implemented by Izertis stands out for:
- Automatic and periodic import of tenders from countries through web services.
- Import of tenders through CSV files.
- The platform allows the creation of manual tenders and has an administration panel for the correct management of imported tenders.
- The platform has a company register and company management of Colombian companies.
- The platform automatically manages currency exchange through web services.
- The platform allows Colombian companies to participate in tenders, a record of tenders in which they have participated, allows them to be saved as favourites and allows them to be tracked.
- Integration with ProColombia's ERP.
- Management of ProColombia advisors.
The result
With the development of the international business opportunities platform, ProColombia has been able to position itself as a national benchmark in the search for opportunities for Colombian companies abroad, providing them with a tool where they can consult and participate in tenders from any foreign country in a centralised manner, and which allows them to filter by country, type of service, speciality, deadline for submission and cost.
In addition, the tender search process has been streamlined, eliminating the mechanical and routine process by ProColombia, integrating opportunities, advisors and company participations with its ERP in Salesforce.