Month: July 2019

Procurement is always evolving, and managers have the difficult job of ensuring their team’s day-to-day workload is running smoothly, while keeping an eye on the big picture to prepare for what’s next. To help with that, here are five great resources from around the internet for public procurement managers: 

1) Nifty Little Management Guide for New Managers  [ARTICLE ] 

Public procurement teams and startups share one thing in common: lots to do, and limited resources to get it done. Alan Seng wrote this article for startups, but it has lots of useful advice for public procurement managers as well. 

Seng discusses the two factors that managers can impact to maximize team output: time, and leverage. Time is finite (and let’s be honest, there’s never enough of it). Managers can give their employees more leverage to get work done by enabling greater efficiency, through:

• Processes and workflows to help teams be more systematic in their approach
• Technology to ease bottlenecks in the process
• Sharpening of skill-sets to enable individuals to be more productive

2)  Strategic Procurement as a Valuable Tool  [ARTICLE] 

In this article, government procurement expert Stephen Bauld lays out his vision for the procurement professional of the future. Get a sense for where your team is headed in terms of organizational impact: 

“Municipal procurement needs to be viewed as far more than the setting of rules and procedures to govern the manner in which goods and services are procured for the delivery of municipal public services and programs. It needs to be seen as an integral part of the process of service and program delivery.”

3) Invest in your procurement function for better outcomes organization-wide   [WEBINAR]

How do we get from here to there? It starts with procurement teams getting the right training and tools for the job. This webinar helps with that! 

Tune in to hear Bonfire’s Omar Salaymeh in conversation with Paul Brennan, procurement educator and Director of Purchasing for Rockland County. Together, they lay out a toolkit for public procurement teams to articulate procurement’s value to the organization and make a successful case for the investment in procurement technology and training. 

4)  GovEx Academy  [ONLINE COURSE] 

Data is often heralded as the new currency, and its application in procurement is growing. Fortunately, GovEx academy offers several free, self-guided introductory data courses to help you get started using data intelligently on your team. Developed by the Centre for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, they each take about two to three hours. 

Check out: 

• Getting Started with Data Management 
• Getting Started with Data Inventorying

5) The disengagement doldrums [ARTICLE] 

It probably won’t surprise anyone to hear that only about 30% of public sector employees report high engagement in their jobs. This is a concern for managers: not only are engaged employees happier, they also perform better and get more done.  

Government is often limited in the perks and monetary rewards that they can offer, but the good news is that there are far more meaningful and long-term ways to ensure engagement. This article gives a run-down of some successful programs at other public organizations. 

Coming up:

Don’t miss our upcoming webinar with NIGP, featuring Patrick Moore, Senior Fellow with the Centre for Digital Government.

Making Sense of Procurement Tech:  a practical guide to digital transformation

August 13, 2:00 pm ET

Procurement is a hard job — but managing the procurement process with outdated tools (or no tools at all) is making it even harder. That’s the reality for 60% of procurement teams who rely on manual hard-copy processes for their bid and RFP process.  

Every team has a tipping point, after which the status quo becomes unsustainable. Read on to see if you recognize any of these signs on your team:  

1.  Paper cuts are an occupational hazard of your job.

2. Your office is running out of storage space for filing cabinets.

3. You have procurement software—but it’s so old that it only runs on a computer from the 1990s and only one person on the team knows how to use it. 

4. Your blood pressure spikes on bid closing day. 

5. More than once, you’ve debated the time on the clock with a vendor at bid closing time.

6. You have procurement software, but you spend more time in Excel than in the system. 

7. A vendor debrief can send your department into detective mode trying to track down scores and comments. 

8. You have procurement software, but nobody has logged in for months. 

9. Getting people to serve on evaluation committees is like pulling teeth. 

10. With all the email threads from vendors and evaluators, ‘inbox zero’ is a faraway dream. 

If you’re nodding your head to any of the above, it’s time to take a look at the evolving procurement technology marketplace. Modern sourcing software has adopted the same principles of user experience as the apps you use in your day-to-day life, resulting in an intuitive interface that is easy for stakeholders and procurement teams to learn and use. By digitizing and centralizing your bid and RFP process, your team can: 

• Eliminate paper and Excel completely (resulting in less time spent on paperwork, less storage space needed, and no risk of lost or misfiled documents)                
• Reduce timestamp disputes and bid closing chaos with a simple and straightforward online submission experience for vendors
• Improve collaboration, by providing a convenient online platform for evaluators to communicate on project progress, review proposals, and complete scoring 

Wondering where to start?

 Attend the webinar with NIGP: 

Making Sense of Procurement Tech:  a practical guide to digital transformation

With Patrick Moore, Senior Fellow, Centre for Digital Government

August 13, 2:00 pm ET

Things are changing when it comes to the ways that public agencies approach their software needs. 

Previously, suite solutions reigned. Organizations purchased ERP systems and other large-scale solutions with the promise of one source for all the data and information that powers their organization. 

Fast-forward to the present. Many teams have been burned by painful multi-year implementations and infrequent updates. Others find themselves stuck with monolithic software that forces a square peg into a round hole, leading to workarounds and manual steps outside the system. This is not just inefficient—it also compromises the integrity of your data and leaves you with an incomplete picture. 

As a result, organizations are favouring a new, more agile type of software: “best-of-breed.”

What is best-of-breed software? 

Technopedia defines best-of-breed software as: 

“The best system in its referenced niche or category. Although it performs specialized functions better than an integrated system, this type of system is limited by its specialty area.” 

Here’s how it works: rather than trying to find a software solution that is ‘everything to everyone,’ many public agencies are implementing best-of-breed systems in multiple functional areas and linking them together—a ‘swiss-army knife approach’ to buying software. 

In the context of procurement technology, GovTech defines best-of-breed as “digital tools designed for one element of the procurement process, such as sourcing.” 

5 benefits of best-of-breed software 

How does best-of-breed software help your team? Here are some key advantages:

1. Solutions do exactly what you need them to. 

By nature, best-of-breed solutions are hyper-focused on doing one thing well. As the GovTech procurement guide notes, “by specializing in one area, a vendor may offer newer technology and more extensive capabilities than companies providing broader applications.” You can also expect more frequent updates and greater product innovation. 

2. ROI in months, not years. 

Because they involve fewer stakeholders and offer specialized solutions, best-of-breed systems have lighter training and implementation requirements — making them a good fit for teams that need results today and can’t wait for a lengthy implementation.  

RELATED: Calculate the ROI of sourcing software for your organization 

3. Better user experience. 

The cornerstone of good user experience is designing solutions with end users’ needs, behaviors, and values at the core. Thanks to their narrower scope, best-of-breed solutions can provide a user experience that is tailored to primary users’ needs and preferences, making it intuitive to learn and pleasant to use on a daily basis.

4. More agile, less risk. 

Nobody plans for their software implementation to fail, but in reality, 90% of them do. Best-of-breed solutions have much lower implementation and start-up costs, meaning the risk of getting locked into a system that doesn’t work is much lower. Some systems reduce risk further by offering ‘proof of concept’ or trial periods so you can try the solution before committing to a long-term contract.

5. Can be linked together efficiently. 

Employing more than one best-of-breed solution doesn’t mean your data is doomed to be siloed. Many best-of-breed solutions offer significant flexibility, allowing you to connect multiple systems through light integrations or simple processes.

A best-of-breed software case study for public sector

“Best-of-breed” was the approach that Craig Milley, Principal Consultant at Wayfinder Consulting, took when seeking technology to support procurement improvements for Cayman Islands government. 

Rather than seeking a one-size-fits-all ERP-style application, they chose to implement multiple purpose-built software systems. They selected best-of-breed solutions that met the Cayman Islands’ unique needs, supported process improvements, and could be quickly rolled out to stakeholders, many of whom are not subject matter experts in procurement. 

After selecting Bonfire to manage the bid and RFP process, they were able to quickly implement the software across forty departments and begin reaping the benefits of increased vendor competition, accelerated cycle times, and better visibility. 

“Our approach was to get the best-of-breed technology in each area and stitch them together — the right technology for the right function,” explains Milley.