Month: June 2021

Whether it’s been sourcing laptops so students can do school online, adjusting to welcoming students back to school safely, or adapting to new vendor diversity legislation, K-12 procurement teams have had a lot on their plate over the past year. At Bonfire, we’ve seen these challenges first-hand with the 90+ K-12 school districts we work with across 49 states and provinces. That’s why we decided to bring K-12 Bonfire users together for a virtual user-meetup, providing a space for procurement professionals to share peer insights and best practices. 

From June 15-17, attendees had the opportunity to hear from fellow K-12 procurement teams and Bonfire experts to unlock new ways to use the platform to address their challenges and needs, and get a sneak peek into new product features to come. Here’s an insider look into what attendees took away. 

Day 1: Panel and Roundtable

Our CEO Omar Salaymeh kicked off our user meet-up with some opening remarks that included a look back on procurement in 2020, as well as highlighting new Bonfire features coming in 2021—including new DBE tracking functionality, subcontractor visibility, access to RFP documents, and our latest approvals feature. Omar then gave a high-level view of the state of K-12 procurement today by diving into some stats from the Bonfire database. 

Then, we jumped into the panel “Procurement in 2021: Navigating Vendor Diversity & Best and Final Strategies.” The panel featured Kim Murphy at Gwinnett County Public Schools, Carrie Roberts at Atlanta Public Schools, and Benjamin Mora at Harlandale Independent School District.

Given new legislation that will make vendor diversity an increasing priority for many school districts, for the first half of this discussion, panelists shared how they use Bonfire to increase and track their vendor diversity efforts. For instance, Kim at Gwinnett County Public Schools started to track vendor records and local vendors in Bonfire, using certificate submissions in order to verify these registered vendors. Carrie at Atlanta Public Schools talked about how her organization focused on education and outreach to both the community and their internal clients in order to expose opportunities to more minority-owned and small businesses. For example, they saw a trend where minority vendors struggled with filling out the registration forms properly, so they developed joint education sessions with a practice project in Bonfire to show them how to do it. 

The second half of the panel discussion focused on Best and Final Offer (BAFO) strategies. A quick poll of the session attendees found that the majority (78%) use BAFO strategies on select opportunities. The consensus among the panelists is that BAFOs are really only effective if you are able to bring in a large enough pool of vendors, which is where Bonfire comes in. “Bonfire democratizes the process with instant communication to the vendors and your evaluators,” said Benjamin from Harlandale Independent School District. Other benefits that the Bonfire product brings to BAFOs, according to panelists, include the clear scoring insight that helps guide conversations with suppliers, the transparency it provides for executives, and Bonfire’s latest approvals feature. 

Day 2: Peer-led Toolkit Session

This interactive workshop was led by Wes Albinger, Procurement Coordinator for Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). Wes provided an in-depth look at the value Bonfire has been able to provide the school district in the past year. 

Until early 2020, MPS used a strictly paper process, which became problematic with the district’s high volume of projects and internal/external scrutiny. Since implementing Bonfire…

• MPS has been able to expand their use of Bonfire to include templates, multi-category decisions, questionnaires, and intake. 
• Reviewers have consistently given positive feedback on Bonfire’s ease-of-use. MPS’s goal is to minimize evaluators’ effort and attention by only assigning relevant criteria to review, so that they can get back to their day jobs.
• MPS has been able to incrementally add on functionality and use Bonfire according to their evolving comfort level and familiarity.

Wes ended his session by giving attendees an inside look into how MPS uses templates to save time and effort. 

Day 3: Product Day

On day 3, the Bonfire Product team walked users through the upcoming product roadmap, focusing on what was recently released, what’s in development, and what’s to come in the future. Bonfire’s latest feature releases—Approvals and Supplier Diversity—sparked lots of questions from users, who wanted to see the new product features in action. 

This user meet-up day consisted of two feedback sessions. In the first session, groups discussed how they start researching and leveraging their network to start projects on the right foot. In the second session, groups focused on how they start off projects and how they could use templates within Bonfire to reach more effective outcomes. Many users were embracing templates or had plans to build template programs in the near future. 

Overall, it was a fantastic week full of shared client insight, networking, and a look into K-12 procurement as we head into the second half of 2021. If you are a Bonfire user in academia, healthcare, utilities, or transit, keep an eye on your inbox—more info on upcoming user meet-ups for those segments is coming soon!

Transposing thousands of line items from paper into Excel. Facing high-conflict moments while opening physical envelopes in front of a crowd of vendors. And, of course, dealing with countless inevitable paper cuts.

Those are just a few of the challenges Gerald Reiner, Bergen County’s Director of Purchasing, won’t miss now that the New Jersey county has transitioned from paper-based processes to Bonfire’s eProcurement platform.

“There was just so much paper,” Reiner says. “I can’t tell you just how many paper cuts I would get with bid openings. Not to mention, as you’re sifting through papers and everyone’s eyes are on you, looking for every little mistake so they can contend the bid if it’s close.”

As the largest county in New Jersey by geography and population, Bergen County jumped at the chance to streamline their processes when new state legislation brought on by the pandemic, namely Assembly Bill 3112, allowed local government and school districts to use eProcurement technology.

Since adopting Bonfire, their newly streamlined, digitized procurement processes are already driving overwhelmingly positive results — some they didn’t even see coming.

Serving New Jersey’s largest county

With a population of over 900,000, Bergen County runs an average number of solicitations that, within New Jersey, is second only to the State. The purchasing department sources goods and services for a diverse array of internal clients, including nine departments, a sheriff’s office, a prosecutor’s office, a surrogate’s office, New Jersey’s largest public hospital, and more.

While citizens have only a small window into purchasing activities — mainly roads, parks and plows, says Reiner — procurement teams know just how much sourcing goes on behind the scenes. Bergen County’s purchasing department sources a variety of goods and services, from professional consulting to veterinary pharmaceuticals, and everything in-between. 

Eliminating paper-based pain points

On top of the obvious safety risks that COVID-19 posed to in-person bid openings and evaluator meetings, even before the pandemic Bergen County had already been facing procurement challenges. Like any other government organization with predominantly paper-based processes, the County was dealing with issues like human error, significant project delays, and frustrated vendors.

Being limited to procurement processes that relied on paper and in-person meetings presented a host of challenges for every solicitation. Something as simple as procuring traffic signal repair parts involved weeks of transposing paper bids into Excel. “And then we would have to go through and make sure that everything was evaluated side-by-side after we transposed them, and hope we didn’t make an error,” Reiner says.

Bonfire delivers compliance, collaboration & security

Recognizing that paper-based and highly manual procurement workflows were limiting the busy purchasing team’s ability to meet their stakeholders’ complex and varying needs, Bergen County became one of the first public entities in New Jersey to transition to eProcurement.

Bonfire’s state-of-the-art procurement technology delivers on all of Bergen County’s security, vendor experience, and interdepartmental collaboration needs, all with fully-supported implementation.

Easy implementation

Implementing new eProcurement software in the middle of a pandemic came with some daunting change management demands, but Bonfire’s award-winning client implementation and support helped Bergen County get complete internal buy-in. “Our implementation specialist Krista was great because she not only helped us learn the platform, but she kept our implementation on track,” says Reiner.

Leveled-up security

Like every public entity, Bergen County needed a solution that protects their data while still ensuring a fair and transparent process. Bonfire meets their stringent criteria for fedRAMP compliance, consistent uptime, role-based access, and anti-virus security. 

A better vendor experience

Bonfire is also supporting Bergen County’s goal to drive more competitive solicitations and increase their vendor pool by increasing visibility into bids in the County and across New Jersey. With an improved, user-friendly experience, Bonfire ensures that vendors are able to submit their bids seamlessly, on time, and with support through email or phone. 

Boosted interdepartmental collaboration

According to Reiner, improved cooperation between departments is where Bonfire has delivered the most significant impact, providing a one-stop destination that’s easy to navigate and accessible to everyone. “We can work with our internal agencies or even our external consultants and we know that everyone is seeing the same information at once,” he says.

Improved processes for procurement, stakeholders & vendors

Delivering digitized procurement at every stage of the process, Bonfire empowered Bergen County to drive impressive results and return on investment, including:

• 100% compliance with New Jersey local public contracts law
• Seamless adoption for internal clients and vendors
• 99% uptime, role-based access, virus protection, and fedRAMP-compliant data security
• 50K+ pages of paper evaluations and bid submissions eliminated in less than a year

Better, faster sourcing decisions

As more public entities across North America make the switch to Bonfire, paper-based agencies are lagging behind. Learn how our intuitive, powerful, and easy-to-use platform can help you make better, faster sourcing decisions. Request a demo today