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The Budapest district of Újpest bought used software from us and saved over 100 000 euros, which they can now use for other important expenses.

Újpest Town Hall was struggling with outdated software. Therefore, in 2021, it issued a tender for the supply of Office 2016 Home and Business, Windows 10 Pro, and for the upgrade of server software. Specifically, this involved Windows Server, Exchange Server and SQL Server and their respective CALs. We were also invited to participate in the tender.

A suitable product will save hundreds of hours of work

One of the products the town hall required was Office 2016 Home and Business. This edition is designed for home, or small business users and each product has its own activation key. An IT specialist would have had to go round all offices and manually install Office on all 200 computers. This would take weeks.

For businesses and institutions, Office 2016 Professional Plus – an edition from the Microsoft Volume distribution channel – is much more suitable. The technician only needs a single activation key and uses it to get the software running on all computers at the same time from his interface.

The municipality was aware that Volume products are better suited for their needs, however, they haven’t realized that the Office 2016 Home and Business that was included in their specification, is only available as a retail product. Once our Sales Manager Imre Csordás, who was responsible for this tender, notified them about this, they took it into consideration when assessing offers from all participants.

Beware the shady sellers

Apart from us, there were 4 other companies participating in the tender. Three of them offered new, but very costly, software products (their price was four times more expensive than used software!). One competitor offered significantly cheaper software, but even when taking into consideration their proposal consisted of used products, the price was still way too low. This raised our concern.

“Unfortunately, it is not rare to run into unreliable sellers on the used software market. They usually offer very cheap products, but without providing a full legal documentation, which can cause big problems to the buyer in the future. One of them is risking a huge fine during a software audit,” says Imre Csordás, Sales Manager for Hungary. Public institutions that haven’t had an experience with buying used software yet are especially prone to be at risk of being scammed, simply because they are not sure which documents they should demand from the participating potential suppliers.

That’s where we come in – thanks to years of experience on the used software market as well as with software licensing, we are able to provide guidance and advice to public institutions on what should and shouldn’t be included in the demands and conditions, so that everything is in full compliance with the law.

The result: huge savings and risk-free purchase

Our free consultations provided to the municipality about used software legality, software licensing and product specifications, proved to be crucial for their understanding of what to watch out for when dealing with used software suppliers. Despite this fact, some things were already out of the municipality’s control due to previously set conditions, which made them worried about the outcome.

As the main criteria was the lowest price for each item, it meant part of the products could potentially be supplied by an unreliable supplier = the other participant who offered used software in the tender. Luckily, it turned out that this company had some issues with unpaid debts, which is unacceptable in a public tender, and was therefore disqualified. This was a big relief for Újpest. It also meant we could deliver all of the software products for the project (we originally won just part of the tender).

"I appreciate that the professionals at Forscope did not take our tender documentation as a done deal, but actually thought about it and were able to give us advice that we can also use in future tenders. Used software from Forscope saved us dozens of thousands of euros that we can now use for other important expenses! Their expertise about legality and the documents they provided assured us we could buy from them again in the future without any worry,” says Attila Kaizer, the IT Department Lead of Újpest Municipality.

Need a consultation for your public procurement for software products?
Do not hesitate to contact us, we will be happy to help!

Need a consultation for your public procurement for software products?
Do not hesitate to contact us, we will be happy to help!

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