Company History

From Europe to the United States: Mercell aims to digitalize procurement for all public agencies

Delivering more than efficiency

Mercell was founded in the year 2000, at a time when several such eProcurement companies were coming into being. Prior to the advent of these eProcurement technologies, public agencies relied on newspapers, broadcasting, mail, and basic products like Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word to conduct their day-to-day work: awarding trillions of dollars on public contracts. Mercell’s vision was to not only increase efficiency and transparency, but also to improve the consistency and quality of solicitations, offer evaluation, and objectivity in awarding. This is what we offered right from the start.

The future of public procurement

Since our inception, we’ve teamed up with procurement thought leaders to develop detailed procurement functionality in our software – functionality no offered by our competitors. At the time of our entry into the US market in 2018, this immediately struck Procurement Manager Mike Thornton, a thought leader in US procurement.

"The future of procurement in the United States" -Mike Thornton, CPPO - City of Leesburg Florida on Mercell's Negometrix4 Platform

Solely focused on your needs

Most eProcurement solutions profit from selling your agency’s public information to potential bidders. While this may allow some competitors to offer a lower price, this short-term savings are offset by extra charges to suppliers which, in the end, will need to be paid by the agency anyway. More importantly, this practice has proven to reduce competition, especially from small and medium local enterprises. We firmly believe that a supplier-based revenue model leads to a loss of focus on services and development of features empowering you – The buyer.

Deploying the latest and most secure technology

Most eProcurement solutions on the US market use dated and less secure architectures. We’ve leveraged years of business and user experience gained working on the Negometrix1, Negometrix2, and Negometrix3 platforms, to create Negometrix4, a brand-new solution using the latest technologies such as web SPA (Single Page Application). An SPA works in the browser updating only required content rather than the entire page, significantly improving speed. The frontend is developed in Angular, a state-of-the-art Google library to make applications truly responsive and dynamic (as well as easier for developers). Angular allows for a smooth UX on any device, including mobile.

Negometrix4 functionalities are available through REST APIs with JSON serialized objects to facilitate integrations and automated reporting. Hosting is done in Microsoft Azure with documents securely stored in the Azure BLOB to guarantee the highest availability and scalability. Negometrix4 is the only eProcurement application offered in the US that is ISEA3000/SOC2 and ISO 27001 certified.

Our superior security, technology, and user-friendliness has made Mercell’s Negometrix4 platform the leading cloud-based software solution for public eProcurement and contract management. We cover the full scope of procurement; requisition building, sourcing, evaluating, awarding, contracting, and performance monitoring; Credit goes to the feedback received from users – allowing us to constantly improve our software. Nowadays, Mercell employs more than 600 full time product innovators, developers, consultants, account managers and sales representatives.

 

After half a year of using the Platform, our agency has realized tremendous cost savings, an increase of 150% in supplier participation, and have left a greener footprint by eliminating paper from our procurement process" - Dean Mealy, CPPO - Town of Palm Beach, Florida

Very large and growing base of demanding public buyers as customers

Mercell has more than 2,600 buying agencies as customers and more then 500,000 suppliers as users. Mercell delivers services to public agencies in the USA and in 13 European countries. Our vison is to be the first-choice solution of public buyers by unleashing the full potential of a trusted, user-friendly, and feature-rich dedicated procurement software.

Amazingly warm welcome in the USA

In 2017, co-founder Jan Siderius, current President of Mercell Inc. was invited to speak at the NIGP Forum conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is where Jan learned just how much value eProcurement could bring to the US public eProcurement market. Less than a year after this conference, Jan opened an office in Brooklyn, New York. Mercell Inc. currently employs 14 US staff members and has excellent references in 13 US states such as:

  • The County of Monterey, CA
  • The Town of Palm Beach, FL
  • The City of Leesburg, FL
  • New York State Office of General Services, NY
  • Maryland Stadium Authority, MD
  • Boone County Fiscal Court, KY

Our current customers are proud to be the first group using the software within the United States. They conduct all procurement practices via the platform and have been thrilled with the results. The United States Public Procurement community is beginning to slowly recognize the unique benefits of Mercell’s Negometrix4 platform, a professionally developed software dedicated to public procurement.