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RFI27006871

Request For Information eProcurement Software Solutions

SECTION A. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

The State of Rhode Island, through the Division of Purchases and Division of Enterprise Technology Strategy and Services, is seeking information from qualified vendors regarding eProcurement software solutions that can support the State's ongoing procurement modernization efforts.

In 2017, Rhode Island began a comprehensive initiative to modernize its public procurement operations, transitioning from a predominantly paper-based environment to a fully digital procurement ecosystem. This effort included the implementation of an eProcurement system in 2022 and the deployment of a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in 2025. As a centralized procurement state, all agency procurement activities are conducted through the Division of Purchases, making efficient, transparent, and user-friendly procurement tools critical to supporting statewide sourcing operations.

The State's mission is to continue streamlining procurement processes while maintaining compliance with statutory requirements and promoting transparency, competition, and public trust.

Through this Request for Information (RFI), the State seeks to better understand the capabilities, deployment models, and implementation strategies currently available in the marketplace for eProcurement software solutions that support core public procurement functions for state government agencies.

The State is particularly interested in solutions that provide robust sourcing and purchasing capabilities, facilitate vendor management, and offer contract management functionality to support our Master Price Agreement portfolio of statewide contracts. The State seeks systems that are intuitive and easy to use for all stakeholders involved in the procurement process, including procurement professionals, vendor administrators, and members of our vendor community. The State also seeks solutions that can be readily adapted to evolving business needs, regulatory requirements, and future functionality enhancements.

The State plans to leverage its ERP system as the entry point for agency users to create and submit requisitions for solicitations. Approved requisitions will be transmitted to the eProcurement system, where sourcing activities including solicitation creation, vendor communications, bid submission, evaluation, and award will be managed. Upon completion of the solicitation process and selection of the successful vendor(s), the awarded procurement record will be transferred back to the ERP system. The ERP system will serve as the system of record for Purchase Order/Contract issuance and post-award procurement activities, including contract management, release processing, receiving, invoice processing, and payment.

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Any proposed solutioning must support Rhode Island's statutory mandate to conduct open, fair, and competitive procurements. The solutioning should also demonstrate public-facing access to procurement opportunities, awards, and other relevant procurement documents, while supporting records retention and transparency requirements in accordance with applicable Rhode Island General Laws.

This RFI is exploratory in nature and is intended solely for the purposes of market research and intelligence gathering. Issuance of this RFI does not obligate the State to issue any subsequent solicitation. Response to this RFI does not preclude any vendor from participation in any related subsequent RFP.

SECTION B: REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

This RFI outlines the type of information being solicited and response structure requested from qualified respondents who have direct experience with providing eProcurement and Contract Management software solutions for public-sector, government entities.

A. Information Scope

1) Strategic Sourcing - Describe your solution’s strategic sourcing functionality supporting the full solicitation lifecycle including creation, posting, evaluation, award, and related administrative functions and communications as follows, however not limited to:

a) Template Management

i) Creation and maintenance of reusable solicitation templates by solicitation type (e.g., RFP, RFQ, RFI).

ii) Creation and maintenance of a repository of reusable clauses, questionnaires, established line items and standard documents.

iii) Automatic or user-selected application of templates/repositories during solicitation creation.

iv) Version control and security for template management.

b) Creation

i) Creation of line item-based, document-based, or hybrid solicitations.

ii) Support for sealed bidding, including single-envelope and dual-envelope (technical and cost) proposal submissions.

iii) Attachment of solicitation documents and incorporation of content from the template repository.

iv) Configuration of solicitation timeframes, including posting dates, opening dates, closing dates, and Question & Answer period.

v) Public visibility of all solicitation opportunities.

c) Posting

i) Addenda Management - ability to adjust dates & times; manage attached documents, modify line items, other changes as needed. Ability to send notice to vendors, vendor addenda acknowledgement (as applicable) and updates to the public solicitation website. Track versioning and history.

ii) ‘Question and Answer’ Management – ability for vendors to submit questions and for the State to respond electronically within the system.

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d) Vendor Response Submission

i) Ability to search and view solicitation summary and details on active and historic opportunities upon logging into their vendor record.

ii) Electronic proposal and/or line-item response capabilities.

iii) Ability to upload attachments.

iv) Acknowledgment of any required clauses, addenda, questionnaires and/or documents before submission is allowed.

e) Opening/Evaluation

i) Electronic solicitation opening process, including downloads of all vendor response documentation and sealed file management as applicable for two envelope solicitations.

ii) Secure access to submitted vendor responses.

iii) Sharing of vendor proposal responses with authorized evaluators (can be internal and/or external users).

iv) System-generated bid tabulation process for line-item based solicitations.

f) Award

i) Ability to select one or more vendors for award.

ii) For line-item based solicitations; functionality to award partial, split, or all line items.

iii) Describe how award process is linked to vendor management, to include any requirements for award transition.

g) General Functionality

i) Describe your internal views and navigation for buyers and vendors.

ii) Describe your file sizes and types your system supports.

iii) Describe your public-facing procurement portal/website – Searchable page of all active and historic solicitation opportunities available for public view and ability to connect to the State’s Purchases website, www.ridop.ri.gov.

Example of current site: https://ridop.ri.gov/vendors/bidding-opportunities.

iv) Solicitation Notices – Ability to post public notices at various stages of each specific solicitation, to include attachments.

v) Cancellation of solicitations.

vi) Describe any additional related functionality.

h) RI Department of Transportation (RIDOT) – In addition to the above sourcing functionality, describe any modules and/or functionality designed to support government transportation agencies:

i) Line-items

1) Management of RIDOT “Blue Book” catalog of line items, https://www.dot.ri.gov/business/bluebook/index.php including import, maintenance, versioning, and updates.

2) Sub-quantity management for allocating contract quantities across multiple projects, funding sources, or work activities.

3) Configurable additional line-item fields for tracking funding https://rigov.sharepoint.com/sites/DOA-Purchasing-OSP-2.0-Team/Shared%20Documents/General/RFI%20Draft/2026%20Final/www.ridop.ri.gov https://ridop.ri.gov/vendors/bidding-opportunities https://www.dot.ri.gov/business/bluebook/index.php

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ii) Solicitation draft limited access and approval workflows that manages access to designated team.

iii) Reports – Additional standard/custom reports such as Line-item historical average price, Item history, etc.

iv) Integrations and/or standard/custom reports of resulting award line-item data that support full data import to RIDOT project management software systems and/or RIDOT ERP instance.

2) Contract Management - Describe your contracting functionality as follows, however not limited to:

a) Create a contract record transitioned from an awarded solicitation and/or create new stand-alone record.

b) Addenda Management - ability to adjust dates; manage attached documents, modify line items, other changes as needed. Ability to send notice(s) to vendors and updates to the public contracts website. Track versioning and history.

c) Attachment of contract documents and incorporation of content from the template repository such as reusable clauses.

d) Display awarded/qualified vendor(s) names and contact information in a prominent location for ease of visibility, linked to applicable vendor’s profile for current information.

e) Website – Describe your search functionality including filter capabilities of all active and historic contract records, available for public view and ability to connect to the State’s Purchases website, www.ridop.ri.gov. Example of current site: https://ridop.ri.gov/ocean-state-procures-osp/contract-board.

3) Vendor Management - Describe your Vendor Management functionality as follows, however not limited to:

a) Describe the vendor registration template configuration process for registration, account/profile and state validations/certifications and their use by vendors and state supplier management team.

b) Describe if this is a single or multi-tenant instance. If it’s a multi-tenant environment, do vendors register once or twice?

c) Available profile statuses and level of permitted interactions. Ex., ability to allow or deny submission of solicitation proposal responses based on status.

d) Ability for state and/or vendors to update data with re-validation as applicable.

e) Ability to apply a vendor diversity qualification(s) and where it is viewable throughout the system.

f) Vendor view of their profile for data management and interface of solicitations for potential proposal submissions.

4) Technical Capabilities - Describe your technical capabilities as follows, however not limited to:

a) Describe environments available for live and test data sets.

b) Describe your utilization of COTS, customizations, and enhancements.

http://www.ridop.ri.gov/ https://ridop.ri.gov/ocean-state-procures-osp/contract-board

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c) The SaaS solution must maintain Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Moderate authorization, aligned with National Institute of Standards and Technology SP 800-53 Rev. 5, including MFA, FIPS-validated encryption, continuous monitoring, vulnerability management, incident response, and documented security governance.

d) As appropriate to the solution being offered and in addition to the above, include if the below can be provided:

i) SOC1 or SOC2 Attestation

ii) System Security Plan

1) Is the solution restricted to any HW/SW platforms?

2) Is the solution WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA compliant?

3) Can a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) be submitted?

4) Describe how your product supports accessibility.

5) Describe your product’s forward-looking roadmap and evolution over the past 5 years.

6) Describe your solution’s approach to integrations.

7) Describe your solution’s approach to system access – MFA, SSO

e) Describe how AI is leveraged in your eProcurement solution, if applicable. Is this feature standard, configurable or optional? Is there an additional cost for this feature (yes/no response only, not to specify actual cost)?

f) State needs to maintain a 99.9% system uptime, especially during business hours, describe your process and SLAs. Provide performance metrics on active implementations.

g) WorkDay ERP Integrations

i) Describe if your system can specifically accommodate integrations with

WorkDay ERP. Specify:

1) whether integration is reusable or bespoke.

2) whether integration is native/standard connector, configurable integration toolkit, or custom build.

ii) If applicable, indicate any projects with Workday integrations: client name, Workday version, integration scope (requisitions, POs, contracts, suppliers).

5) Reporting/Audit Trail

a) Describe your solution’s reporting capabilities including canned, ad hoc, and support for external.

b) Describe your audit trail management including standard logged entries and adhoc manual entries with ability to upload attachments.

6) Implementation Strategy

a) Describe the elements of a successful implementation plan.

b) Describe a typical implementation timeline including migration of data from the existing system(s).

c) Describe your implementation model of resourcing of your product team or utilization of a System Integrator and if single or multi-tenant.

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d) Describe your release approach, including frequency, testing strategies, quality assurance and how configurations/customizations survive releases.

e) Describe a communication and training plan for vendors and internal state procurement users.

i) Define your training materials that are consistently made available with the initial implementation plan and each release to include how they are coordinated with state resources.

f) Describe your approach to product support.

g) Describe your help desk procedures for vendors and state users on technical issues.

Include escalation processes for high priority/critical issues.

7) System Administration- Describe your system administration functionality for User Management, Organization Structure, Template Management, System Settings, other.

8) eProcurement Vendor Qualifications

a) Describe your capabilities and background of your organization as it relates to the eProcurement software solutions for public-sector, government entities.

b) Provide list of public-sector, government entities you have successful implementations with, to include:

i) State/Entity name, type of implementation (replacement vs new eProcurement system), modules implemented (sourcing, contracts, vendor management, transportation, reports or other), system/ERP integrations

ii) Timeline - Contract award date, go live date for core sourcing, total implementation duration (months), approximate number of users and vendors.

c) Describe your product innovations to date and future plans.

9) Insights - Please share additional information you feel the State should take into consideration as it pertains to:

a) Additional information regarding items outlined above.

b) Additional or modified system capabilities the State should be aware of.

c) Risks and benefits the State should consider.

d) Other relevant information pertaining to this RFI.

B. RFI Response

Use the “RFI27006871 Vendor Response Matrix” excel workbook for response. The workbook structure is mirrored to the outline above for a standard structure of responses. At the vendor’s discretion, additional documentation and/or narratives may be provided.

Do NOT include a cost proposal with the RFI response as cost shall not be considered with this

RFI.

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Interview/Demonstration The State, at its sole discretion, may request Vendor(s) to come to the Division of Purchases office at 1 Capitol Hill, Providence, RI 02908 or establish a virtual Microsoft Teams session for a live interview and demonstration to further understand eProcurement system capabilities. If a Vendor is selected for a live interview and demonstration, the State will contact the vendor and schedule accordingly.

Appendix A. Definitions For the purposes of this RFI, the following is list of common terms and their definitions:

1) AI – Artificial Intelligence

2) APRA - Access to Public Record Act

3) API - Application Program Interface

4) Business Hours – The State’s business hours are Monday - Friday 7:30 AM EST – 4:30

PM EST, except on State recognized holidays. State calendars will be posted on the Division of Human Resources’ website at http://www.hr.ri.gov.

5) Buyer, Procurement Specialist – An individual within the Division of Purchases that manages solicitations, purchase orders, contracts and procurement processes per RI General Laws within eProcurement system, ERP system and related state processes.

6) Commodity Codes – The State uses the ‘United Nations Standard Products and Services Code’ (UNSPSC) set in eProcurement and ERP software systems.

7) Contract -

a) Contract Agreement – written and signed legal agreement document between a

Vendor and the State of Rhode Island. Does not become binding until ERP transactional contract record is established (with the agreement as an attachment) and resulting Purchase Order is issued.

Systems:

b) Workday (ERP) - ERP transaction record that converts a contract agreement resulting from a solicitation into a non-encumbering binding Purchase Order record that an agency can release off of as they reach established milestones in the contract agreement document’s lifecycle.

c) OSP (eProcurement) - OSP informational record that supports a public searchable website for Master Price Agreement to include name/description of record, attachments, approved vendor list and more.

8) COTS - Commercial off-the-shelf software solution.

9) DOP Website – Division of Purchases internet website, http://www.ridop.ri.gov/.

10) Entities:

a) State Entity - Any entity that is directly considered to be a part of the State of Rhode Island umbrella and is subject the Rhode Island General Laws. (e.g., state agencies and state run schools).

b) Member Entity - or any term referring to an entity that is related to the State of Rhode Island and can participate in procurement from the resulting Contract per R.I. Gen. Laws § 37-2-56 (e.g., quasi-public agencies, institutes of higher education, municipalities). There are 59+/- entities.

11) ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning Software System (e.g., WorkDay)

12) ETSS – The State’s Division of Enterprise Technology Strategy and Services who manages the application of information technology for executive state agencies.

13) Fiscal Year - State of Rhode Island’s fiscal year is defined as July 1 through June 30.

Quarterly and annual reporting will be based off of this schedule.

http://www.hr.ri.gov/ http://www.ridop.ri.gov/

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14) MBE/WBE – Minority Business Enterprise/Woman Business Enterprise

15) MPA - Master Price Agreement. MPAs provide broad categories of goods and services for a specified contract period on a statewide basis. State agencies order their goods and services off relevant MPAs that alleviate the need for individual procurements. Statewide applicability (per state law) permits quasi-agencies, municipalities, and school districts to piggy-back the State’s MPA pricing contracts, at the vendor’s discretion. MPAs originate through an RFP, RFQ or OE process.

16) Off Hours, Non-Peak Hours, Non-Working Hours – for scheduling of routine System maintenance, off hours are 4:31 PM EST – 7:29 AM EST Monday through Friday.

Saturdays and Sundays are also considered off-hours, however if the resources from the State are required to be available for a particular task, this will need to be scheduled in advance and per mutual agreement between the Vendor and State. There will be NO off hours during a state of emergency (e.g., significant weather event).

17) OE - Open Enrollment MPA. OE MPAs allow for new vendors to submit proposals to become an approved vendor on that MPA during defined intervals during the MPA’s active term vs MPAs with a set contract period that has to run its full term before new bid is considered.

18) OSP - Ocean State Procures™. This is the Division of Purchases’ branding of their eProcurement system. This branding will carry forward as it is a State trademarked property.

19) PII - Personally Identifiable Information. Any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including, but not limited to, education, financial transactions, medical history, and criminal or employment history and information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as their name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, biometric records, etc., including any other personal information which is linked or linkable to an individual. (Defined in OMB Memorandum M-06-19, "Reporting Incidents Involving Personally Identifiable Information and Incorporating the Cost for Security in Agency Information Technology Investments").

20) PHI - Protected Health Information. Defined in 45 CFR 160.103, as well as being referenced in Section 13400 of Subtitle D (’Privacy’) of the HITECH Act, as follows:

“Protected health information means individually identifiable health information:

a) Transmitted by electronic media;

b) Maintained in electronic media; or

c) Transmitted or maintained in any other form or medium.

Protected health information excludes individually identifiable health information in:

d) Education records covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act;

e) Records described at 20 U.S.C. 1232g(a)(4)(B)(iv); and

f) Employment records held by a covered entity in its role as employer.

21) Public- this has multiple definitions;

a) Entity – A individual citizen or community that the State of Rhode Island/Division of Purchases provides procurement information to.

b) System Record Visibility – Many aspects of procurements must be made publicly available per RI Gen Laws, transparency requirements and record retention policies. Solicitation and Contracts (limited use to MPAs) are required to be posted to a publicly accessible website that does not require login credentials to view the contents of the record. If a vendor decides they want to submit a proposal response, then login credentials will be required and submission process becomes internal view until the Division of Purchases chooses to deem proposals and evaluations publicly viewable

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c) Sector – The State of RI is public sector which entails more regulated processes for adherence to RI General Laws.

22) R.I. Gen. Laws - Rhode Island General Laws.

23) SaaS - Software as a Service.

24) Sealed Bidding - Single and Dual Envelope –

a) Single – The ability to enable the collection of proposal documents in a single envelope that allows vendors to submit all their documents per solicitation instruction in one place.

b) Dual (RFP-based solicitations) – The ability to enable the collection of proposal documents in two separate envelopes that allows vendors to parse their documents per solicitation instruction in their submission. Upon solicitation opening date and time, the first envelope is fully accessible by the Purchases staff to begin the evaluation process. The second envelope remains sealed from all views, including Purchases’ staff until evaluation is returned on the first envelope. Only proposals from first envelope deemed a passing score, will be permitted to have the second envelope opened. The proposals with failing scores will remain forever sealed (not to be deleted from record). In an RFP, the first envelope is utilized for technical proposals and the second envelope is for cost proposals.

25) SI – System Integrator. Third party or partner vendor that supports the implementation of the eProcurement software solution.

26) SInfo - Sensitive Information. Information that is considered sensitive if the loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability could be expected to have a serious, severe or catastrophic adverse effect on organizational operations, organizational assets, or individuals. Further, the loss of sensitive information confidentiality, integrity, or availability might: (i) cause a significant or severe degradation in mission capability to an extent and duration that the organization is unable to perform its primary functions; (ii) result in significant or major damage to organizational assets; (iii) result in significant or major financial loss; or (iv) result in significant, severe or catastrophic harm to individuals that may involve loss of life or serious life threatening injuries. (Defined in HHS Memorandum ISP-2007-005, "Departmental Standard for the Definition of Sensitive Information").

27) Solicitation Methods - This functionality will manage how vendor proposal documentation access is structured as solicitation creation:

a) Formal - Access to proposal documentation remains sealed until bid opening date and time. (Dual envelope solicitations will require additional sealed files)

b) Informal – These solicitations are used in a quoting process and proposal documentation can be access in real time and are not dependent on the bid opening date and time.

28) Solicitation Types:

a) NOC - Notice of Cooperative Solicitation.

b) OET - Open Enrollment Technical Proposal.

c) OEV - Open Enrollment Vendor Assessment.

d) QLV - Qualified Vendor List. (There is an additional modified version for an

MPA.)

e) RFI - Request for Information.

f) RFP - Request for Proposal. (There is an additional modified version for an MPA.)

g) RFQ - Request for Quote. (There is an additional modified version for an MPA.)

h) SOQ – Statement of Qualification.

29) State of Rhode Island, State - terms referencing the State of Rhode Island as a purchasing entity setting forth terms for this RFP and resulting Solicitation(s), MPA(s), Contract(s), Purchase Order(s), etc. All activities are subject to the Rhode Island General Laws.

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30) System, Solution - Bidder’s proposed Electronic Procurement Software Solution (uses an uppercase leading character). The term ‘system’ in all lowercase is the generic use that applies to any type of software system (e.g., WorkDay system) that is not the Bidder’s proposed Electronic Procurement Software Solution.

31) Transparency.ri.gov – State website in which any contract awarded for $1,000,000 or greater must be posted to the “contract” section of the website with copies of the full purchase order, fully executed agreement/contract and any additional documents as required (http://www.transparency.ri.gov/contracts/) for public access.

32) Vendor, Bidder, Offeror, Contractor, Company, Applicant - or any other term referring to the entity that will propose goods and services to the State.

33) Vendor Registration Types:

a) Initial – This registration is the initial vendor data entry a vendor can do with minimal profile information to establish a profile quickly. This does not require any state Supplier Coordinator team review to validate their data at this stage. This ‘initial’ registration will allow a vendor immediate access to review any solicitation and submit a response/proposal without the added steps of a ‘complete’ registration review which has significant lead time that a bid posting does not support. The vendor’s profile status will be presented as “pending”, “not approved” or similar, until they go through a “complete” registration approval review.

b) Complete – This registration is the same record created with the ‘initial’ registration. If a vendor is awarded a solicitation or elects to have their account reviewed without an award, the state’s Supplier Coordinator team may request additional information/documentation of the vendor to be added to their profile record and review for validation against several databases. The Supplier Coordinator review is initiated when an upload of a W-9 occurs. Once the account passes, the vendor’s profile status would be changed to “approved” or similar.

34) Workday -This is the software in use for the State’s financial ERP system. The State is on System Version 2026.18, Code Version 2026.18.1075.

http://www.transparency.ri.gov/contracts/