4 MIN READ
ERP systems can offer wide-ranging capabilities like accounting, HR, permitting, budgeting. They’re a great option for managing day-to-day business operations for public agencies, but often, ERPs get stretched beyond their intended use.
For procurement professionals in particular, these overwrought ERP systems often fall short. When an agency’s goal is to manage the entire procurement process with speed, clarity, and control, ERP modules can be overly complex and limited in functionality.
PlanetBids, on the other hand, stands out. It’s purpose-built for public sector procurement and designed to funnel smoothly into your agency’s ERP system after project award to handle billing, payment, and financial reconciliation. PlanetBids focuses on doing procurement well – from bid creation to award to contract management – before feeding data into an ERP system for back-office processing.
Let's explore how PlanetBids compares to ERP systems and why it’s the better choice for agencies prioritizing procurement.
Speed It Up
ERP systems offer broad functionality, but they’re not purpose-built for procurement. PlanetBids specializes in managing the full procurement process, saving time, increasing vendor participation, and ensuring compliance. You can then hand off clean data to your ERP for payment and reporting.
Key Metrics: PlanetBids vs. ERP Systems
|
Metric |
PlanetBids |
ERP Systems |
|
Implementation Time |
Weeks, with pre-configured procurement tools and unlimited templates |
Months or longer, often requiring IT-led customization, intensive training, and financial team involvement |
|
Ease of Use |
Intuitive, procurement-focused interface built for procurement professionals and their vendors |
Complex interface is built for finance, accounting, and HR – not for procurement |
|
Bid Management |
End-to-end automation from bid templates and specification libraries to bidder communication and submission |
Basic or limited bidding functionality is often added as an afterthought to a system not designed for purchasing |
|
Vendor Management |
Simple vendor portal for pre-registration, automatic notifications, and clear Q&A |
Vendors communications are often handled outside the system via phone or email, with in-person submissions |
|
Evaluation and Awarding |
Built-in scoring and collaboration, reviewer access controls, audit trails, and evaluation transparency |
Usually requires manual calculations or third-party tools, with limited transparency into calculations |
|
Integration |
Designed to provide clean procurement data for your ERP system |
Procurement data is often siloed or managed in spreadsheet workarounds |
|
Cost |
Scalable, with packages designed for any agency and budget size, at just a fraction of an annual ERP contract price |
Expensive even for small businesses, with costly add-ons and up-charges for customization |
How PlanetBids Outperforms ERP Systems
Procurement-Specific Functionality
ERP systems are built with a financial and operational lens, not a procurement one. That’s why their procurement modules often lack the flexibility and detail needed for public sector bidding.
- PlanetBids’ Advantage: PlanetBids covers every stage of the procurement process: bid creation and release, vendor communication, submission management, bid evaluation, awarding, and certification tracking. These workflows are customized for government agencies, with no retrofitting or intensive customization required.
- ERP Limitations: Procurement is typically a sub-module of a broader financial suite. Bidding tools are often underdeveloped, requiring users to rely on spreadsheets, email chains, or entirely separate platforms .
Efficiency and Ease of Use
Procurement teams need tools that work the way they do, but ERPs feature complex interfaces designed for accountants or IT administrators.
- PlanetBids’ Advantage: With intuitive, procurement-first workflows, PlanetBids users can complete tasks faster and with fewer errors and no starting from scratch with every new requisition. Tools like automated vendor notifications, built-in Q&A, and transparent evaluation reduce back-and-forth and eliminate no-bids and bid protests.
- ERP Limitations: Users often report difficulty navigating ERP procurement modules. Even simple actions like uploading bid specs or evaluating proposals can require IT support or workaround processes, and vendor access is confusing and complicated.
Better Evaluation and Awarding Processes
Bid evaluations are critical, and they require transparency, security, and efficiency. ERP systems often lack the granularity procurement teams need, and they don't provide the public insight into taxpayer-funded purchasing.
- PlanetBids’ Advantage: Check technical qualifications before evaluation, build adjustable and specific calculations and scoring metrics, side-by-side proposal comparisons, and customizable reviewer access make evaluations smoother and auditable for an unlimited number of evaluators.
- ERP Limitations: Many ERP systems require exporting data to spreadsheets, calculating scores manually, or using external tools, all of which increase risk and reduce traceability.
Smart Data Integration with Your ERP
PlanetBids was never designed to replace your ERP – it was built to work with it. Procurement data flows out of PlanetBids and into your ERP system, ensuring back-office functions like payments and vendor records stay aligned.
- PlanetBids’ Advantage:
PlanetBids acts as the front-end for procurement and sourcing, allowing you to quickly and easily build and release solicitations, accept and score submissions, and manage project documentation, with procurement-specific reporting and data analytics built right in. It then passes finalized data like awards, vendors, and costs to your ERP for payment and reconciliation.
- Manual Limitations: Without a procurement-specific front-end, ERP systems often rely on users to manually enter data, causing duplication, errors, and inefficiencies.
Want to Learn More about Procurement Efficiency?
Visit our Procurement Efficiency resource center, where you can assess the efficiency of your own operations, get helpful tips on identifying and addressing bottlenecks, download shareable content, and read more blogs on how to improve your efficiency.
Why PlanetBids is the Better Choice for Procurement Teams
PlanetBids is built for public procurement teams by procurement professionals from the ground up. It’s a smarter, faster, and more reliable choice than general ERP systems for managing bids, vendors, and sourcing activities.
- Purpose-built Workflows: Designed by and for public procurement professionals.
- Faster Onboarding: Go live in days, not months, with unlimited templates without costly customization.
- Better Compliance: Built-in tools for audit trails, business pre-qualification and insurance certification tracking, and cost reporting.
- ERP-Ready: Provides clean procurement data for your finance team and ERP system to process.
- Scalable and Configurable: Supports agencies of all sizes, from small school districts to statewide departments.
- Cost-Effective and Time-Efficient: Costs just a fraction of an ERP's annual bill, while saving your team approximately 75 hours and $4200 per employee per year and eliminating manual errors.
Ready to Modernize Your Procurement without Replacing Your ERP?
PlanetBids isn’t trying to replace your ERP. It’s here to make it better. By focusing on procurement-specific tasks, PlanetBids gives your team the tools they need to work smarter, faster, and with full transparency.
Contact us today to learn how PlanetBids can streamline your procurement process while working seamlessly with your existing platform. Let's help you do procurement better.