You Can't Print It All In-house

"We used to advertise jobs for at least two weeks," Tucker says. "Now we may advertise the bids for less than a day if we need to."

Another state government in-plant that is using an online system to get bids is the Washington State Department of Printing. A little over a year ago the in-plant added P3 Expeditor software to manage its print procurement process. Data on all of the shop's print vendors is stored in the software's database, and each is categorized by specialty. When it's time to bid out a job, the specs are entered into the system, the appropriate vendors are selected, and the software sends each of them an e-mail with a link. When they click on it, they're taken to a secure site where they can review the bid and submit a quote.