Each vendor is issued a private Web page that lists current bids and past project history. Criteria can include location, desired skill set or size of the company. The client can also specify how many vendors may bid. For example, one client requested 10 bidders from the United States and five from India. This page is restricted only to the client and the vendors invited to bid.
Vendors can post questions for the client to answer on the project page.
The client can post an answer so that all bidding vendors can see it, or they can post a reply to only particular vendors. This reduces the number of times the client has to answer the same question. Steve Lester, systems analyst at the Intermountain Power Service Corp., a power plant in Delta, Utah, is aware of the problems of finding good outsourced vendors. Located about 130 miles from Salt Lake City, Delta isn't exactly a technology center. But if the project is small, larger development companies aren't interested.