Forum for Local Bid Requests

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This is a long-term and larger scale enhancement request, but I’m curious to see if it might be beneficial to anyone else.

We are in the property management business and contract out a lot of facility repair and maintenance. For a while now we have wanted to find a vendor that can act as the middleman to pair us with local contractors that can accomplish the project we need. We would love to have a central hub where we could submit RFPs (request for proposal) for jobs ranging from a minor plumbing repair up to a mass roof replacement project for 10 buildings. That RFP would automatically go to all vendors that service the location and provide the category of services in the RFP.

Ramp already has the hardest part done since it has a large network of vendors. That network could be leveraged to create a B2B marketplace of sorts to connect businesses with local partners. I think the largest use case is facilities repair services, but it would also apply any other services that require a local vendor such as event planning, catering, courier services, etc.

Is the process of finding the best vendors for local bid requests a challenge for other companies using Ramp? If not, are there existing services you are already using to solve that problem?

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Hey Kevin, appreciate you sharing this with the community. My name is TK and I lead our Procurement & Vendors product team at Ramp. I love this idea of being able to put an RFP in the network and collect quotes/proposals from vendors in the network.

We’re starting to think more about how customers can leverage Ramp’s Vendor Network. Curious to learn more about how you & others handle these RFPs with vendors today!

Thanks.

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Sure thing, currently it’s a manual process. We have good relationships with a number of vendors, so we will give them a call or send them an email. It’s a little inefficient, but it works fine otherwise. But when our usual vendors are tied up on other jobs or when we need to do a more unique project, we go to Google and start from the beginning looking for a vendor.