Colorado joins Montana in requiring vendor proposals submitted on iPads
Back in June, Deltek reported on a new procurement trend in Montana: requiring the submission of vendor proposals on iPads. During my daily news scouring, I saw this same issue brought up in the Denver Business Journal regarding the state’s upcoming Medicaid management information system (MMIS) procurement. Colorado is going to require proposal submissions on seven iPads, which will not be returned. According to the publication, regional leaders say the practice is “outrageous” and sets an unreasonable precedent.
In the draft RFP, the state calls for second-generation or newer iPads, in an effort to reduce the expense of physically printing copies of the proposals. Later in the RFP, it calls for the submission of iPads in place of printed copies. So, logically, if the vendor was the one paying for the submission of printed proposal copies, how is it saving the state printing costs? Isn’t it, instead, costing the vendors more to send iPads that the state gets to keep for “future use as deemed appropriate by the department”?
Whatever this new practice is, it does not seem to be limited to one state, as now Montana and Colorado are potentially receiving thousands of dollars in free technology. Vendors reading our blogs: Do you care about submitting a couple thousand dollars in iPads to states in the hopes of a $100 million contract? Are states crossing the line? Personally, I’d ask for the proposals to be delivered in a Maserati to cut down shipping costs, but that’s just me.
For something like an MMIS proposal, which I assume would be very large, it might actually be cheaper to submit via iPad than it would be to print (color), package and ship. It is more than just the cost to prodce the submitted copies. Many vendors will produce a backup set (in case the first set goes wayward) as well as many intermim prints to verify layout and print quality. We typically have to do a 'white glove' review of each printed copy to make sure every page in every copy is in order. Labor, materials and shipping costs can add up quickly.