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 Hunting RFPs
 If a company wants to do business with federal, state or local governments, 
												first it must answer a request for proposal (RFP). But finding RFPs and 
												monitoring them can be difficult because they are posted in many different 
												places, said Jeff Xie, president of JXE Inc., a St. Paul-based software 
												consulting firm. So JXE developed a "Government RFP Finder and Notification 
												system," at http:www.findRFP.com, that finds RFPs based on keywords and 
												geographic criteria. It then sends businesses matching RFPs via e-mails. About 
												99 percent of the RFPs are online, Xie said.
 
 JXE first built the system for internal use. "We were looking for government 
												business, and we found there were too many government sites," he said.
 
 Several hundred businesses have subscribed so far, Xie said. He expects to have 
												a couple of thousand subscribers by the end of the year. JXE offers three price 
												plans. The regional plan, for example, finds RFPs in specified geographic 
												regions or up to three states and costs $13.95 a month.
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 JXE software scouts Web for government work
 JXE Inc., a Woodbury-based consulting firm, has developed on online tool that 
												searches government Web sites for potential contracts and alerts users that a 
												potential job may be up for bidding.
 
 The software, called Government RFP Finder, is a subscription service that 
												actively hunts out government "requests for proposals" - an early step in 
												any procurement process or contract. Users can customize the service to look 
												for certain types of jobs, said JXE president Jeff Xie.
 
 Without assistance from services such as RFP Finder, Xie said companies often 
												had to manually seek out prospective jobs among thousands of RFPs. The Web 
												service is bolstered by human editors to make sure results are accurate.
 
 Sie didn't initially intend for JXE to offer the software commercially. It was 
												designed for internal use by the firm to save time. But customers kept 
												requesting the service, he said.
 
 “The most reliable sector in the economy right now is the government," Xie 
												said. “People want to take advantage of that."
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