Attracting more than 28,000 entrants after only 3 years launching, DauThau.info was a software in the Bidding Ecosystem, a maximum support platform for private businesses to participate in the bidding market of public procurement, private procurement and auctions. DauThau.info has overcome the difficulties of the national bidding network, "paving the way" for businesses to participate in the digital economy of Vietnam and the region. However, which hidden behind that encouraging results was the story "I followed the call of my heart" by Mr. Nguyen The Hung (General Director of Vietnam Open Source Development Joint Stock Company (VINADES) - The company has incubated the Bidding Ecosystem project.
Removing difficult barriers for the government and businesses
In these recent years, the application of online bidding has become an inevitable trend in Vietnam, contributing to improve the quality of multi-dimensional investment capital and promote Vietnam's rise in the international integration period. Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan (Deputy Director of Procurement Administration Department, Ministry of Planning and Investment) said: “The application of Information Technology (IT) in online bidding has played an important role in the economic-social development, renovating growth models, improving competitiveness for the economy in general and businesses in particular and for international integration, reforming institutions and administrative procedures in line with the national IT development program.”
If the question was that “has Vietnam applied the technology platform?”. Then the answer was definitely already applied, but what worth discussing was the applied technology of 10 years ago while the world has been speeding up on the 4.0 track. This was a wake-up call for the slowing-down national bidding system. The economy would lag behind very quickly if there was no timely solution available.
Specifically, the government has opened “the door" and created favorable conditions for the development of the bidding cyberspace for many years, but it must be said that the model has not yet brought about a clear result. Many businesses that had experimented with online bidding struggled with the workflow. Although it was a digital technology platform, it was very slow and not "user-friendly" as expected. Typical shortcomings were operating system limitations (Internet Explorer and Windows only), disallowing quick tracking via mobile apps, unable to categorize bids, public procurement portals constantly crashing, bid riggings, "red army - green army" wriggled...
There were also many cases where the parties participating in the invitation to bid were limited in terms of professional capacity, even falsifying capacity documents. Some state-owned enterprises also shared that the number of bidding registration documents, important papers, bidding documents, project documents, bid documents, etc. were often so enormous that uploading to the country's tender website was prone to problems, leading to many followed problems.
DauThau.INFO possessed the most advanced and modern features today
That was the reason why Mr. Nguyen The Hung and Mr. Pham Duc Tien (Marketing Director of VINADES) and their associates urgently founded DauThau.info software with the Tender Ecosystem and officially set it in operation in 2018. Mr. Hung added: “It was important that the government had created fair game rules as well as a mechanism to help promoting innovative start-ups in what DauThau.info has been doing and the World Bank recommended. It helped to take advantage of social resources and the creativity of businesses. The government supported Start-up Nation, I believed this was true and I believe the government would do the same!”.
Businesses benefited from smart cyberspace
It was an innovative start-up product based on open-source software and public data that provided a bird's-eye view of the bidding sessions for businesses from every angle when entering the public procurement market.
The concept of digital bidding was very different from person to person. To put it more simply, the Bidding Ecosystem and DauThau.info were building a software to help businesses access information about bidding through a digital platform. As a result, businesses could bid more effectively and the data was connected, linked and analyzed to help businesses get multiple perspectives every time they participated in a bid, even transparently solve problems, shorten bidding time and save maximum management costs. This software has really become a platform connecting the state, businesses and contractors in a friendly and sustainable way.
The Bidding Ecosystem was built on the NukeViet platform - the product awarded the Vietnamese Talent Award in 2011 and recommended by the Ministry of Education and Training in Circular No. 08/2010/TT-BGDĐT. Besides, the responsive technology application platform allowed users to access it anytime, anywhere on most browsers, devices and most popular operating systems today.
Participating in the Bidding Ecosystem, businesses could easily access each other, connect businesses with each other or between businesses and the state through the bidding model. With DauThau.info, contractors would easily access public procurement information. The software also provided bidding data for the past 10 years, and continuously updated the latest data and sent it to businesses via email.
In addition, contractors could use many support features to track the desired bidding package and download bid documents directly from the software interface on any device and operating systems such as tablet or computer, Windows or MacOS
At first, DauThau.info was developed as VINADES Company wanted to solve the problems in the company's own bidding at that time, but then it was also because of national pride. To make Vietnam stronger, businesses must be the pioneers, and DauThau.info would be one of the stepping stones in that journey. But a plain saying would only cause confusion or boredom for employees and businesses. National pride must be expressed by research, application, and experience to see if the software was flexible.... Only when a step by step was perfect, then we could be proud, our nation could be proud.
The fact has proven that the people in the development team of the Bidding Ecosystem did not simply speak. The birth of this project was not only a technological innovation to catch up with the times, but also a quick step forward to help Vietnamese businesses access a professional bidding process and enter into world auctions. That was why DauThau.info and the Bidding Ecosystem continuously received positive reviews from the Vietnam Software and IT Services Association and won the Sao Khue Prize 2021 for digital products and solutions field in the software/information technology industry
Mr. Pham Duc Tien- Marketing Director of Vietnam Open Source Development Joint Stock Company (Vinades) received the Sao Khue Award 2021 for digital products and solutions field in the software/information technology industry
Exploiting Vietnamese brand software
Currently, in order to meet the maximum bidding needs of individuals and businesses, DauThau.info has provided a variety of software packages for analyzing bidding information with different advantages and features. Accordingly, businesses and contractors could easily search and hunt for bid information from the time when it has not been announced, and at the same time monitor the process of bidding and bidding until the bidding results were available.
The path to perfecting the dream - idea - product was the consensus of all officials and employees in the development team of the Bidding Ecosystem incubated by VINADES Company. “I remembered the days when I came back to work at VINADES, I myself was a young person, I yearned to have the opportunity to work in a methodical way and to be imparted experience in order to be able looking further, wider and deeper. Thanks to the leadership team who always gave their best support, it has helped me and my colleagues become more confident when facing difficult tasks, especially when pioneering in launching new products, and it was finally bearing fruit." - Mr. Tien shared.
From the day emerging the idea of the Bidding Ecosystem to the day conquering the Sao Khue Award 2021 for digital products and solutions field in the software/information technology industry, it has been nearly 3 years. That period was very short compared to the age of other information technology corporations in Vietnam, but it was enough to partially solve the "problem" of unfinished bidding.
A turning point, a new future and a new miracle are waiting for young people in VINADES to explore and conquer.
