Zanzibar, the Government's strategic eMarketplace and Purchase to Pay (P2P) system, has picked up a top prize at the prestigious 2008 MCA Management Awards dinner held in London on April 28.
The Zanzibar Managed Service, operated by OGCbuying.solutions and delivered by ProcServe, won outright in the Management Consultancies Association's Operational Performance category.
The accolade follows a period of significant growth in the use of the eProcurement tool by public sector organisations. The Welsh Assembly Government recently announced the launch of its xchangewales online purchasing system, based on the Zanzibar platform.
Meanwhile the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has confirmed that it is to make OPEN - the online marketplace for schools, also based on Zanzibar - ready and available to all 20,500 schools in England from Spring 2008.
And the Department for Communities and Local Government chose Zanzibar to support their drive towards improving their procurement processes.
By bringing together government contracts in a single platform, Zanzibar enables collaboration across all public sector buying organisations and provides access to the best pricing and transaction-ready suppliers.
Robert Knapman, Director of eCommerce, OGCbuying.solutions, said: "We are delighted to have won in this category. The team have worked hard to deliver this groundbreaking service, so this is a fantastic reward for all the hard work.
"eProcurement generally and Zanzibar in particular are at the heart of OGCbuying.solutions' new category management approach to collaborative procurement.
"Zanzibar mobilises public sector buying power. It makes eProcurement easier, it's flexible, it can be adopted speedily, it widens engagement and provides control for users. And, because we have been through a rigorous development period with the inevitable technological challenges, we now have a tried and tested, leading edge product."