In an effort to add efficiency and streamline the purchasing process for the City of Taylor, the City Council last month unanimously approved a new comprehensive electronic procurement and contract management system. The contract with OpenGov Inc. is for three years at a cost of $176, 754.

It is being funded through Purchasing Department Contractual Services.

Purchasing Manager Ben Clayton appeared before council to discuss the new addition. Based on projected savings on personnel and several other factors, Clayton said the return-on-investment with the OpenGov program is less than two years.

“The program will streamline the workflow,” Clayton said. “Instead of our employees working in different silos, they will be working in share drives together in order to manage the process in real time.

“(OpenGov also) helps manage contracts. It creates thresholds and earmarks on expiring contracts. It helps grade these projects and the contractors involved in them.”

Clayton said that he and his staff spent almost a year evaluating different systems to take over this workflow. “OpenGov was far and away the best option,” he said. The City will see an annual savings of $95,000 and reduce man hours in that specific area by 50 percent.

“It’ll give us a much more clear-eyed view of what we are doing,” Clayton said. “It will free up time to create agreements and vet out contractors.”

OpenGov Procurement is the only known solution that provides a fully integrated platform spanning:
- Intake requests.
- Solicitation drafting (with automated document assembly).
- Vendor discovery and outreach.
- Live solicitation management.
- Structured evaluation and scoring.
- Award tabulations.
- Integrated contract lifecycle management.
- Records retention and audit logs.

It’s also the only eProcurement solution with a guided, logic-driven solicitation builder. The staff is able to generate compliant bid documents in real time using configurable templates, conditional logic, AI-powered scope generation and reusable clause libraries.

OpenGov also includes:
- Side-by-side scoring.
- Ranked scoring for equitable evaluation.
- Multi-phase evaluation workflows.
- Built-in bid tabulations and award recommendations.
- Full audit trail of scores, comments, and approvals.

OpenGov is focused on the public sector, with:
- A dedicated implementation team composed of former government procurement professionals.
- Integrated reporting dashboards aligned with public procurement best practices.
- Seamless integration across other OpenGov platforms (budgeting, permitting, reporting).
- Unmatched Transparency and Auditability Every user action—internal or vendor—is logged and time-stamped, supporting full traceability for:
Internal approvals.
Vendor communications.
Q&A and addenda.
Contract execution.
Evaluation scoring.