Month: August 2019

There’s only one silver lining to the end of summer, and that’s the ramp-up of procurement conference season! Procurement conferences are a unique opportunity to connect with peers across the country and learn a lot in a short time. 

Whether you’re making the trip to the annual NIGP Forum next week or heading to a conference closer to home this fall, here are our top tips for making the most of your time away from the office: 

Before the procurement conference

A productive conference experience starts before the registration booth opens, says Bonfire field marketing specialist Kait Stratis, who is responsible for managing Bonfire’s attendance at upwards of 30 procurement events per year. 

“Understand why you’re attending in the first place. Set a goal for what you’re trying to learn and what problems you’re trying to solve,” she advises. 

With that in mind, you can loosely plan out your speaker sessions and expo visits to ensure you are getting what you came for. 

Once you get there, don’t be afraid to deviate from the schedule as new opportunities arise. Taking some time to think about your goals in advance allows you to adjust on the fly, while ensuring you don’t miss the must-do sessions. 

“Conferences are a great opportunity to explore,” says Kait. “Keep an open mind to new speakers and vendors, hear them out, and understand what they’re trying to do for the procurement world.” 

At the conference 

Making new connections in public procurement

Meeting other procurement folk is one of the biggest benefits of attending a procurement conference. Especially in the siloed world of public procurement, it can be a game-changer to have a trusted group of peers to call up with questions or swap templates. 

However, approaching strangers to make these connections can be daunting. 

Kait has some advice. “Getting involved by asking questions in session Q&As is a great way to naturally start a conversation,” she says. Take the opportunity to chat with speakers after the session as well—after all, they’re at the front of the room for a reason and likely have more useful knowledge to share than could fit in their 60-minute presentation.   

Keynotes and speaker sessions provide common ground that serves as a jumping-off point to connect with fellow audience members, too. 

Beyond that, it’s sometimes just a matter of breaking the ice. 

“Just say hello,” Kait says.  “I have never seen an instance at a professional conference where someone starts a conversation and regrets it.” 

See also: Networking Tips for Talking to New People

Making the most of keynotes and speaker sessions

The biggest challenge at a conference is information overload. With multiple hours or even days of learning, it can be a blur. 

Taking notes is key. Veteran procurement writer Jason Busch has a tip to force yourself not to slack on the note-taking: prepare a short presentation on the material for the day you get back. Whether you ever use the presentation or not, this forces you to pay attention, synthesize, and relate the information back to your organization. And when it comes time to share what you’ve learned with colleagues back home, you’re already prepared. 

It’s also a good practice to set aside some time at the end of each day to reflect and note the highlights. 

“Take five minutes to debrief each night and reflect: what was it today that grabbed me? What did I learn?” advises Kait. 

Will we see you at NIGP? 

If digitization of your procurement function is one of the topics you’re hoping to explore at NIGP, don’t miss the session “Procurement Transformation: Modular Tools for Faster Results” on Tuesday at 1:45 pm. Omar Salaymeh, Bonfire’s Director of Client Success, will host a panel with procurement officials from Ventura County and Region 10 Education Service Centre to discuss how they led digital transformation efforts in their organizations. 

For more information about Bonfire’s eSourcing software for public procurement teams, book a meeting with our team. 

Above all, enjoy the opportunity to step outside the hustle and bustle of your day job to improve your procurement process and build your career! 

Behind the scenes at many public agencies, you’ll find technology that lags way behind the tech that even the average citizen carries around in their pocket.

For example, the master file at the Internal Revenue Service runs on code from the 1950s. The Baltimore police department relies on a 20-year old system for tracking and reporting crime. The San Francisco property tax assessment system runs on computers from the age of the floppy disk. 

These are not just isolated cases: in fact, seventy percent of the government’s IT budget is spent on maintaining legacy systems. 

The IT modernization challenge

Obsolete technology is expensive and time-consuming to maintain (to the tune of $13.6 million per year in the case of the aforementioned IRS system). Still, public agencies struggle to get the budget for modernization—and when they do, the IT procurement process is plagued by challenges. 

Obstacles to effective IT modernization include: 

• Outdated regulations that are out-of-step with the market 
• Long and burdensome procurement processes
• The complexity of decisions with many stakeholders

Given the rapid pace of technology change, governments must modernize or risk falling further behind. Key to this modernization is a more flexible IT procurement approach that can adapt to a quickly-changing technology marketplace. 

Making government IT procurement accessible for smaller players

The traditional approach to IT procurement is to put out a lengthy RFP that provides a list of specifications and asks vendors to demonstrate how they meet those specifications. 

However, this approach is time-intensive and complicated to navigate for vendors—meaning large incumbents often have a leg up over small companies. Ironically, when it comes to advanced technology, it is frequently these small companies who have the agility to refine a market-leading offering. 

For governments to engage more innovative small and medium-sized businesses, they need to channel some of that agility into their own procurement process. 

The agile approach can be implemented in different ways: 

• “Request for Ideas’ or other open-ended tendering formats to learn about a new market
• Structuring the RFP around the problem to be solved, rather than an exhaustive list of specs 
• Including pilots or iterative stages in the contracting process 

Flexibility through cloud-based software

The next significant step is leaving behind government’s traditional preference for on-premise software in favour of a cloud-based model of service.

This recommendation emerged from the 2018 White House Report on Federal IT Modernization, which called for an aggressive migration from legacy systems towards commercial cloud services. Why? Greater innovation, decreased costs, and dramatic service improvements for both agencies and citizens.  

The strain of keeping legacy systems updated and protecting against security threats has become untenable. In contrast, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools: 

• Require no infrastructure or dedicated on-site personnel
• Can be implemented quickly and right-sized to agency need
• Can be kept up-to-date with ongoing releases
• Can react quickly to evolving cybersecurity threats 

These features make it the more secure and cost-effective choice. 

The White House Report outlined various action items—from guidelines to policy changes— to enable agencies to more easily acquire and adopt Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools. But the authors also noted that it’s not all about policy and procedure.

 “An active shift in the mindset of agency leadership, mission owners, IT practitioners, and oversight bodies” will be required to realize the mandate of modernization. 

Ultimately, vendors deserve an equal playing field, citizens deserve modern services, and public agencies deserve to be empowered with the best technology for the job. By changing the approach to IT procurement, everyone can benefit from technology innovation. 

For more, read the GovTech eBook: Understanding Procurement Technology and How to Use It