Trinity Bidding puts IT solutions on the auction block

Shopping is a relaxing pastime for many people: an enjoyable experience of searching through options, seeking out the best deals, and enjoying the stuff they bought later.

This principle does not apply to IT procurement.

Buying IT products for enterprise usually involves complicated negotiations with vendors, lawyers, and money managers and coordinating the needs of various departments. Trinity Bidding hosts a cloud-based bidding and procurement platform for IT solutions to make the cycle easier.

CEO Daniel Tay formerly worked as the IT buying director for a large international company. He grew frustrated with the arduousness of the process, identifying the three main problems in IT procurement: the difficulty of securing the best market price; the lack of communication between departments, which can result in delays, quality issues and overspending; and maintaining updated information on the solutions.

“My company spent over 1 million to hire IT teams, buy software, and build IT infrastructure,” Tay said. “I have seen product failures because departments weren’t informed. Trinity makes collaboration easier and finds issues earlier, as well as reducing costs. You can put the paperwork in the trash.”

To address these issues, Trinity Bidding constructed an environment where enterprise customers have a range of suppliers and data about their products. The team provides tools for all stages of procurement, such as the initial sourcing and updating existing software.

Businesses securely store relevant information, such as product catalogs, supplier lists, proposals, bidding transcripts, and analytic reports on the platform. They can then keep track of everything in one place and even receive support services.

While tools to streamline IT procurement may be useful for buyers, the commerce sages wondered how much more convenient Trinity’s platform makes the process.

“This is crying out for integration with ERP systems,” said Harshul Sanghi, Managing Partner at American Express Ventures. “Even if they are saying they want to be independent, it doesn’t solve problem of how do you actually find the suppliers.”

Trinity Group Ltd. was first founded in 2007 in Hong Kong and Shanghai as a IT sourcing consultant company. It pivoted in 2010 to create a bidding solution and is publicly launching the platform in the U.S. today.

Trinity Bidding is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at theDEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.