Rfi Public Procurement Portal Solution

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Department of General Services – Bureau of Procurement

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI):

Public Procurement Portal Solution

Issued: March 31, 2026
Responses Due: April 14, 2026

1. Overview

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is modernizing its ERP and procurement environment under the Re-Imagine PA initiative and is implementing SAP S/4HANA and SAP Ariba.

The Commonwealth is exploring a Public Procurement Portal to integrate with these systems and replace the PA eMarketplace site. This portal will serve as the Commonwealth’s official public posting site in compliance with applicable Pennsylvania statute and policy.

The Commonwealth is also seeking a solution that could potentially support additional public-facing and supplier-facing functions, including:

• Supplier onboarding in coordination with SAP Business Network

• Replacement of the DGS Supplier Search site

• Replacement of COSTARS website functionality (statewide cooperative purchasing program)

• Management of small business and diversity certification application and renewal workflows

The Commonwealth is interested in available COTS, SaaS, and configurable platform solutions. The preferred approach is a configurable solution that can be adapted to Commonwealth requirements without extensive custom development. However, the Commonwealth also seeks to understand if a custom development solution could be built and maintained for less than the cost of buying the solution or a license to an existing product.

Ultimately, any solution must be capable of integrating with existing Commonwealth systems as well as the future S/4HANA and SAP Ariba tool suite.

This RFI does not constitute a solicitation, request for proposal (RFP), request for bid, or commitment to procure. The Commonwealth is not seeking pricing proposals, binding offers, or contractual commitments.

2. Portal Objectives

The Commonwealth seeks a portal that reflects modern human-centered design best practices and facilitates an easy-to-use, intuitive interface for external users to access procurement opportunities and information. Desired elements and functionality for this system follow; this is not an exhaustive list, and the Commonwealth recognizes that not every system may offer all of these features.

1. Serves as the official public posting site for:

o Notice of Forthcoming Procurement

o Solicitations

o Contract Awards

o Executed contracts and amendments

o Sole Sources

o Emergency Procurements

2. Supports compliance with Pennsylvania procurement law and transparency requirements.

3. Integrates with SAP S/4HANA and SAP Ariba, as well as other Commonwealth systems.

4. Supports structured supplier engagement and onboarding.

5. Enhances transparency, usability, and public access.

6. Is secure, accessible, and scalable statewide.

7. Enables future configurations, applications, or solutions that may account for future procurement system improvements, such as the ability to reserve procurements for newly developed business classifications or newly envisioned methods of procurement.

8. Supports APIs or integrations that enable external systems to pull publicly available data for the purpose of enabling private sector or non-profit entities to build tools and solutions that support the vendor community or other procurement stakeholders.

9. Supports the uploading of multi-formatted documents (PDF, Word, JPEG, etc)

10. Modern searchable interface to include the ability for a supplier to sign up for alerts related to opportunities that may fit their interests or profile, save opportunities of interest, and get alerts for any changes to an opportunity of interest.

11. Ability for offerors to identify themselves as potential subcontractors for an opportunity

SAP S/4HANA will remain the system of record for financial and contract data. SAP Ariba will remain the source-to-contract workflow engine. The portal is expected to function as the public-facing publication and engagement layer.

Vendors should structure responses around these objectives.

3. Posting, Search & Legacy Modernization

Please describe how your solution supports:

• Automated or structured posting of required procurement notices

• Version control and amendment tracking

• Search, filtering, and export capabilities

• Notification subscription services

• Audit logging of publication activity

Legacy Portal Consolidation

Please describe how your solution could:

• Modernize or replace functionality currently provided by PA eMarketplace and DGS Supplier Search

• Preserve historical postings and searchability

• Maintain public URL continuity

Maintaining public transparency and minimizing disruption are key considerations.

4. Compliance & Audit Controls

Please describe:

• Publication controls and review workflows

• Immutable timestamps and audit logs

• Preservation of prior versions

• Traceability between SAP source data and published records

• Records retention capabilities

The Commonwealth must be able to demonstrate what was published, when it was published, and how it relates to authoritative SAP records.

5. Integrations

Please describe:

• Supported integration methods (API, middleware, batch)

• Real-time versus scheduled synchronization

• SAP Ariba solicitation integration

• SAP S/4HANA award and contract integration

• SAP Business Network integration

• Error handling and reconciliation

The solution should minimize duplicate master data and maintain clear SAP system-of-record boundaries.

6. Security, Accessibility & Scalability

Please describe:

Security

• Encryption standards

• Role-based access controls

• Relevant certifications (e.g., SOC 2)

Availability

• Uptime targets

• Disaster recovery approach

Accessibility

• WCAG 2.1 AA compliance

• Section 508 alignment

7. Optional Domains (Under Consideration)

The Commonwealth is also exploring whether the portal could support:

Supplier Engagement and Onboarding

• Integration with SAP Business Network

• Supplier account creation and role management

• Structured intake and validation workflows

• Duplicate detection

• Status tracking and notifications

• Secure document upload and compliance documentation handling

• Optional integration with contractor responsibility or risk validation tools

• Accessible customer options to edit company profile after creation, and easily renew an expired registration

Cooperative Purchasing (COSTARS)

• Cooperative contract listings

• Supplier catalog display

• Member search

• Contract usage guidance

• Payment collection (if supported)

• Reporting

Small Business & Diversity Certification

• Online application intake

• Document upload and validation

• Reviewer workflow support

• Certification status publication

• Recertification tracking

• Reporting

8. Vendor Information

Please provide:

• Relevant public-sector experience

• SAP integration experience

• High-level, non-binding cost information, including licensing model (subscription, user-based, etc)

• Typical implementation timeline for projects in which the solution is integrated with SAP Ariba and/or SAP Business Network

9. Submission

Submit responses by April 14, 2026 to:

ABBY ROCHE

RA-GSITPROCUREMENT@PA.GOV