The State of Kansas
The State of Kansas has implemented Fluid Supplier Portal
Summary
The State of Kansas has implemented Fluid Supplier Portal in addition to building a custom fluid tile called Contract Search which has been built in their PeopleSoft system to provide a searchable environment that would allow the public access to the contract information and documentation.
Customer comments
The State of Kansas has a long-held practice of providing Supplier Contract information on a public-facing website for both external stakeholder and internal agency use. Previously, this was accomplished using a nightly interface to send PeopleSoft contract data to a web platform for storage and public access. This method had several drawbacks, including delays in getting new contracts to the public-facing site and multiple opportunities for processing issues due to the high number of data “hand-offs.” To improve this process, the State of Kansas built a bolt-on feature utilizing the Fluid tile structure to create a new Contract Search tile on our external eSupplier Connection Homepage. This feature provides a searchable environment allowing the public to access state contract information and documentation.
The State of Kansas utilized many different features of the PeopleSoft Framework to deliver this functionality to our end users. Elasticsearch indexes in conjunction with Fluid tiles were leveraged to make this feature a reality. Our end users can now search for a contract with the keyword search feature, similar to using an internet search engine such as Google.
The new Contract Search tile gives the public the ability to access all executed supplier contracts and related documentation, such as amendments and attachments. A high level of planning and creativity from the talented state development and functional staff was required to design, develop and test this custom functionality.
The State of Kansas has been able to greatly reduce the processing time required to post a contract publicly by moving from hosting contract information on a separate website that received a nightly interface from our PeopleSoft system to providing near real-time access to the system data itself via a custom tile on our eSupplier Connection portal. We have also increased the availability of contract documents, making the system perform in a way that benefits public users and state agencies alike.