Client Brief

The Indian Railways (IR) is Asia's largest and the world's second largest

rail network under a single management. Procurement functions in

Indian Railways form major part of the materials management activity

and these functions are effectively discharged by adopting well

established procedures, policy guidelines and practices.

IR caters to an annual procurement over USD 4 Billion through tenders

and annually generates revenue over USD 200 Million through disposal /

sale of scrap.

Indian Railways Embrace

e-Procurement Solutions to

Improve Efficiency and Enhance Performance

Travel, Transportation & Logistics

Client Requirements

As a part of the overall reform process and to

increase transparency in its dealings, IR

decided to adopt and implement an e-

Procurement System for mutual ly

benefiting the Railways as well as

participating vendors. The objective was to

improve transparency and productivity of

railways by streamlining the procurement

process, minimizing the procurement cycle

time, and by reducing the physical interface

between government staff and contractors

in the tendering process.

Solutions Offered

HCL Infosystems was shortlisted as a

technology partner in this initiative by the

Centre for Railway Information Systems

(CRIS), an autonomous organization under

the Ministry of Railways. After a thorough

study of the requirements, HCL Infosystems

offered the following solutions -

Ÿ Portal for Tendering Process - HCL

developed a single portal for the tendering

process with a single log-in registration for

vendors. The e-Procurement System

covered the 17 zonal railways and more than

11 production units. The e-Procurement

application software included features such

as e-tendering, e-auction, e-Contract

Management ( i .e . b id evaluat ion,

negotiation, vendor selection, contract

award, PO placement, material inspection /

receiving / rejection etc.) e-Payment,user

management / administration, vendor

management and so on.

A lot of enhancements / functionalities

are introduced into the system from

time to time as per the requirement of

Indian Railways such as:

Enhancement for Multiple Evaluation

Criteria (i.e. item-wise & consignee-

wise evaluation criteria, item-wise

evaluation criteria etc), where initial

evaluation criteria was total value-wise

Global Tender

e-Payments and L ien Account

Management of bidders

Reverse Auction

Forward Auction

Contract Tracking

Digital Security Features - The e-

Procurement application was integrated

with latest digital security features to

demonstrate and ensure highest level of

security, confidentiality and trust between

the buyer and the seller. It permitted

vendors to search, view and download

tenders directly from the Railways' secured

website and also participate and submit

online offers in e-Tenders directly from the

website in a fair, secured and transparent

manner.

Further, the site allowed the vendors to

interact with the e-Procurement portal

only if they possessed a valid legal digital

certificate from a licensed certifying

authority. The advanced security features

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included digital asymmetric cryptography,

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) enablement

for data encryption / decryption, digital

signature, 128 bit SSL (Secured Socket Layer)

for secured data transmission, digital

authentication, role based action / access

privileges, audit trail, time synchronization

etc.

Datacenter operations support and Help

Desk Support - This included System and

Database Administration regular/routine

activities, backup, patch installation, system

upgrade, and Help Desk support to railway

users / bidders / vendors

Training of railway staff and vendors -

HCL conducted training for Railways staff

and vendors for the application software to

ensure smooth functioning of the new

system and helped them overcome the

inertia to work with latest technology

D e c e n t r a l i z e d p r o c e s s e s a n d

mechanisms -In order to build efficiency in

the systems, HCL I offered phased change

management of existing process involving

re-engineering of Procurement and Auction

processes. This was aimed at creating

common processes across Railways for

procurement & auction, and for codification

of goods / items

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Challenges faced while implementing the

Project and how they were overcome by HCL

Infosystems

Ÿ Limited information and best practice

sharing due to decentralized railway zones

The new system created by HCL

Infosystems has features, which allow

reuse of available data (past tenders of

similar nature with the same requirement)

across the Railways. The system promoted

Procurement Data Sharing across Railways

and reused old tender data to reduce

procurement cycle time

Ÿ Limited Visibility and Long Information

Cycle in the Procurement and Auction

processes for senior management - To

overcome this challenge, HCL I deployed

Dashboards and Analysis Reports catering

to specific need of the Management and

Board. This led to faster and timely access

to information and decision making

Ÿ Security and Reliability of the Portal -

The portal developed by HCL was for use

by various stakeholders like Indian

Railways, registered & unregistered

vendors, inspection agencies etc. Hence,

the security of the portal was a prime

concern for the Railways. To overcome this

challenge, HCL deployed several security

mechanism for application security and

reliability like:

¡ STQC for application security and

reliability

¡ Use of d ig i ta l s ignatures for

e-Transactions

¡ Public key infrastructure (PKI) for data

encryption / decryption

¡ Time stamp by certifying agency

¡ 128 bit SSL (secured socket layer) for

secured data transmission to ensure

enhanced level of trust for auth-

entication

¡ Digital certificate of sender was

attached with each bid document

¡ Document integrity and protection – by

hash check using same one way hash

function and senders public key

authorization (only an authorised

person from the Railways could decrypt

and open e-tender box)

Ÿ Managing seamless functioning of the

portal - HCL offered training to Indian

Railways staff for the new portal and offered

a dedicated Helpdesk team to provide

support and resolve queries of vendors /

suppliers and railway users.

Business Benefits

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More than 3.75 lakh tenders have been

processed worth INR 22000 Crores and

an auction of scrap goods worth INR 500

Crores has happened after successful

implementation of e-Procurement

solutions for Indian Railways by HCL

Automation of e-Tendering (Creation/

Publishing/ Biddin/ Scrutiny/ Tabulation

of tenders) led to reduced procurement

cycle time of materials from 23 days to

instantaneous

80% savings on tender advertisement

cost, 20% saving on overall procurement

cost and 40% saving of time on

procurement cycle time

Streamlining of procurement process

across all zonal railways, led to increased

transparency, and improved reporting

and monitoring of procurement and

costs at Railway Board level

Elimination of aberration and mal-

practices led to improved transparency

and competition through anywhere /

anytime participation. Railways is now

able to rapidly liquidate scrap material

by eliminating high seller carrying cost

such as auctioning cost, interest,

maintenance / storage costs etc.

About HCL Infotech Ltd.HCL Infotech Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of HCL Infosystems Limited, is a Premier Indian Technology

Company and offers a wide range and end to end IT Solutions and Services for both Corporate Enterprises as

well as Government Organizations. With a strong legacy and rich industry experience of over thirty years, HCL

Infotech offers single window turnkey solutions which enables customers to create successful and adaptive

businesses. The Company's IT services and solutions portfolio comprise IT Infrastructure Consulting,

Integration and Outsourcing; Software-led IT Solutions and Biometric based Authentication and Business

Services. With a presence in 4000+ towns across India, multi-technology expertise and partnerships with

leading technology providers, HCL Infotech enables organizations to grow and transform. The company also

has robust operations in Middle-East Asia and Africa and provides comprehensive IT solutions to customers

across verticals in the region.

For more information please visit us at www.hclinfotech.in

For more details, please contact us at or visit us at

marketinginfotech@hcl.comwww.hclinfotech.in

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