Month: October 2020

Whether you’re trying to streamline manual RFP processes or accept vendor submissions while working from home, eBidding tools can help—but not every solution is created equal.

As public sector agencies across North America face tightening budgets and a renewed focus on cost savings to respond to the economic climate caused by COVID-19, free bid management software appears, at first glance, like an ideal solution. 

But as a procurement professional, you know that “free” or “cheap” don’t always mean “best value.” That’s because costs need to be cut somewhere. Sometimes the costs are borne by vendors or a company that wants to buy your data, or the eBidding supplier cuts services like client support or product updates.

Like anything else that’s free, you get what you pay for. But unlike a free Spotify account or a sample at Costco (remember those?), free bid management software can negatively impact your relationships with your vendors, or even put your organization at significant legal risk. Here are three reasons to forgo free, and instead invest in an eBidding solution that has you and your agency’s best interests at heart.

Don’t punish your vendors by making them pay

Many free bid management software solutions require vendors to pay to submit their bid and to view and download all RFP documents and details. But hiding opportunities behind a paywall hurts your vendors’ bottom line. In the end, it forces vendors to increase their prices and fees, so you’re paying one way or another.

Not to mention, these costs force vendors to be more selective, meaning your opportunities will get fewer views, fewer bids, and you will ultimately pay higher prices due to lack of competition.

Most of all, vendor-paid software models make it harder for Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs) and small businesses in your own backyard to bid, causing you to miss out on opportunities to significantly support your local economy.

Free bid management software isn’t worth the legal risk

Another way bid management solutions can offer their software for free is by selling your data to third parties. This isn’t like authorizing access to your personal data when signing up for a Facebook account; there are significant legal ramifications for giving up ownership of data in any business setting, especially as a public sector agency. That’s why your IT department likely doesn’t endorse free software.

Even if you own the data and what happens to it, free bid management software can still put your agency at risk by cutting corners when it comes to privacy and security. These tools may not get a lot of security updates, or they may cause instability to your systems or network. All it takes is one lawsuit or security breach to make that bid management solution suddenly not-so-free. 

Free bid management software doesn’t owe you anything (and that’s a problem)

Unfortunately, lots of free bid management software solutions cut costs by erasing any professional resources that help ensure success through implementation and beyond, like timely product support or a dedicated client success manager. In fact, you don’t get a whole lot of say into how the eBidding supplier operates, because you’re not the one generating revenue.

The result is often a frustrating experience for your internal stakeholders and vendors. Your bids portal is effectively your organization’s digital front lobby—do you want people jumping through hoops to do business with you? Do you want your implementation to fail because of a confusing user experience? Likely not.

So free bid management software likely isn’t going to meet your agency’s eBidding needs—what can you do? How do you move forward if you don’t have the budget to invest in best-value eBidding software? 

Public agencies have a unique opportunity right now to use their CARES Act or other COVID-19 funding to invest in procurement software. In fact, agencies across North America are using their COVID-19 funding to not only invest in eBidding software for this year, but for years to come. Time is running out though—the deadline to spend CARES Act funding is December 30. We recently teamed up with grants management leader eCivis to bring you the definitive guide on everything you need to know about finding CARES and other COVID-19 funding, applying the funding to your missions, and multiplying the funding to maximize outcomes. Download your copy of our latest eBook to get started.

For procurement teams, a standardized and collaborative intake process often gets pushed to the back burner when you’re constantly reacting to the urgent and unforeseen needs of your internal clients. Your procurement intake process, however, has the potential to make or break any project.

Take the 95/5 rule, for instance. According to procurement lawyer Paul Emanuelli, 95% of procurement failures are caused by the negligence to properly address the five core elements of project planning:

• Scoping of requirements (What are we buying?)
• Pricing structures (What is the pricing format?)
• Evaluation of criteria (What is the evaluation plan?)
• Contract format (How do we assemble the final contract?)
• Tendering format (What is the tendering format?)

To secure better bid and RFP outcomes, procurement can add a lot of strategic value when brought into the beginning planning stages of a project. A standardized and collaborative request intake process is key. Digital tools have the power to simplify your procurement processes and connect your colleagues to your procurement systems so everyone is on the same page, driving outcomes that benefit your procurement team, your internal clients, and your leadership. Here’s how.

How intake empowers your procurement team

When requests and questions are coming in the form of forwarded email chains, it can feel like you’re trying to fix the car when it’s already driving down the road. 

An online procurement intake process can help you get requirements right the first time and set expectations when it comes to things like vendor requirements and timelines. Digital tools that are quick, easy, and get requestors back to their day jobs ensure that your process is actually adopted by your colleagues. 

Connecting your intake process directly to your eProcurement software can help eliminate manual data entry and give your team a real-time view into project pipeline, which makes it easier to organize and triage your team’s workload. When your team comes together to plan, it’s fast and efficient to review new and open requests, update details and assignments, and make sure you hit deadlines, all online.

When your procurement team is better aligned and seamlessly communicating, it translates to better collaboration with your internal clients, too. 

How intake empowers your colleagues

Implementing a user-friendly request intake process can help uncover real business need early so procurement can deliver great value at a competitive price—making everyone happy and building trust in procurement’s strategic contribution. 

By providing your internal clients with templates, best practices, and realistic expectations, you can help lighten the load for them. Bring industry bid and RFP data to your planning meetings so that you can assure your stakeholders that you’ve got this. You can help everyone better understand the category, how other agencies have done similar projects, and what to expect with this project when it comes to timelines, criteria weighting, vendor participation, and the types of information you need from vendors.

The result of this supercharged collaboration and alignment is a faster event cycle, which, at the end of the day, is what your internal clients have wanted all along.

How intake empowers your agency

When procurement is equipped with the information you need to make the most informed and cost-effective bid or RFP decisions, your agency can reallocate that saved time and money to more initiatives and programs that benefit your constituents.

As a procurement team, you can enable your agency to steward taxpayer dollars with more impact by giving senior managers visibility into your intake request dashboard, providing them with insight into where and when departments are planning on spending their budget. This insight helps your organization forecast the procurement pipeline and allocate resources to meet demand.

You can bring your agency’s budget to life even further by providing additional insight with national and local competitive event data. With industry data in hand, procurement can enable smarter budgeting for your agency, positioning procurement as a strategic advisor. 

Want to dive deeper into what an online, collaborative intake process looks like, and how it can add significant value for everyone at your organization? Download our intake eBook to learn more.

December 30 is fast-approaching, and with it, the deadline to spend your CARES Act funding. 

According to the House Committee on Ways and Means, state and local governments have received roughly over $765 billion in federal coronavirus funding. As of August 2020, however, state and local governments have only spent 25% of their funding.

We get it—keeping your head above water while responding to the new and emerging needs of your constituents is hard enough, and trying to get a bird’s eye view on how to use your funding in the most effective way possible is no easy task, especially under such a tight timeline. However, you could be leaving funds on the table that could help you invest in tools that will offset some budget pressures that are expected to emerge in 2021. The time to act on your CARES funding is now.

During the early days of the pandemic, many public agency CFO offices turned to their procurement function as a critical area to focus CARES funding to keep essential goods and services flowing to their respective towns, cities, schools, and constituents while most had shifted to a remote work environment. And today, 7 months into the pandemic, procurement technology continues to be an area where public institutions are directing CARES funding to help drive maximum ROI on these funds, all while easing COVID-19-related challenges that your agencies and citizens are facing. 

Get the most out of your CARES funding by pandemic-proofing your procurement process 

According to guidance by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, eligible expenditure for reimbursement under the CARES Act is any “COVID-19-related expenses reasonably necessary to the function of government that satisfy the Fund’s eligibility criteria.”

So does procurement software qualify? Absolutely! 

Investing your CARES dollars in a sourcing software solution (like Bonfire) can serve as a force multiplier, driving greater impact even with limited resources so that you can get goods and services to your constituents quickly and compliantly. The right digital tools can empower procurement teams to reduce costs and drive the best value in bids and RFx for their agency by streamlining manual tasks, increasing vendor competition, and fostering stakeholder collaboration.

In fact, 73% of organizations are prioritizing digital procurement to enable business continuity while working remotely. That’s because agencies are seeking digital transformation to handle new and unique challenges due to COVID-19. Competitive events need to be efficient while maintaining compliance, which is why the average RFP requires 15% fewer evaluators. 21% of evaluations are done outside of office hours, a 62% increase from before COVID-19, meaning evaluators expect more flexibility and convenience than ever before. 

Academic institutions in particular saw a dramatic change as they prepared for virtual, physical, or hybrid classrooms in August and September. An analysis of our own database found that schools have seen a 367% increase in cleaning and disinfecting solution projects, a 122% increase in tablets and computer projects, and a 183% increase in cybersecurity software and equipment projects. 

In addition to all these new challenges, state and local governments are still bracing for the economic fallout predicted for the rest of 2020/2021. As a result, procurement departments are being tasked with doing more with less—less budget and less headcount. For agencies continuing to run their processes over paper and email, finding opportunities to cut costs and drive value amidst resource constraints presents a huge challenge.

Texans Can Academies brought their procurement process online to adapt to these new challenges. Using Bonfire Strategic Sourcing Software, they were able to quickly find vendors to assist with the Academy’s COVID-19 response. Marian P. Hamlett, Chief Financial Officer at Texans Can Academies, said, “One of our first projects was to put out an RFP for COVID-19 consultants to help us with our school reopening plans. I would have never known where to start. Through Bonfire, I was able to find and invite over 150 vendors to participate and we successfully found a contractor that will walk beside us as we figure out how to safely reopen our schools.” 

Leveraging software to respond to the COVID-19-related needs of constituents is not limited to academic institutions, either. Terry White, IT procurement expert covering procurement and disruptive technologies at global research firm Omdia said, “It has never been more important for government procurement teams to strengthen, stabilize, and regulate the procurement process with digital tools. Work from home, flexible working hours, and the need for rapid and efficient processing and evaluation of bids demands it. If not for the government agency themselves, then for the citizens they serve.” 

Procurement is the life source of any city, town, state, municipality, or any public sector entity needing to procure the right resources to keep their communities safe and operational. Software can help fasttrack that process and make public spending go even further, making it an ideal purchase for which to put your CARES funding towards. 

Get started with these 3 easy steps 

The right procurement software can empower you to maximize your budget and exponentially grow your CARES dollars. If you’re ready to start exploring procurement software options that can be expensed through CARES, here are your next steps.

1. Confirm that you have access to CARES funding. If you aren’t sure, speak to your finance department. Or, check out this list.

2. Get to know which procurement solutions are eligible for CARES funding. For instance, Bonfire Strategic Sourcing Software qualifies for CARES, and we’ve already helped CARES recipients sign-on and ensure their funding reporting obligations are met. We’d love to help you as well.

3. Get started as soon as possible—December 30 will be here before you know it! Let our experts help you get up and running with Strategic Sourcing Software in as little as one week.

December 30 is just around the corner; don’t lose your CARES funding by missing the deadline. If you’re still stuck on how to maximize your CARES funding to address constituents’ needs in the most impactful way possible, we’ve teamed up with grants management leader eCivis to bring you THE definitive guide on finding and maximizing your COVID-19 funding. Download your copy for free here.