Procurement professionals know the power of relationships in strategic sourcing. 

Better vendor relationships mean greater vendor competition. Engaged and aligned stakeholders conduct evaluations smoother and faster, making the procurement process more beneficial and less burdensome for those involved. 

Unfortunately, outdated and administratively-demanding processes can put undue stress on internal stakeholders and vendors, straining those critical relationships—and ultimately, jeopardizing effective procurement outcomes.

The Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA)’s utilities procurement team was experiencing these challenges first-hand. With such a large scope—GLWA supplies water to 40 percent of the state of Michigan’s population, as well as wastewater services to nearly 30 percent of Michigan’s population—it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage paper-based workflows. The time-consuming and error-prone nature of these workflows caused a lot of frustration for both internal stakeholders and vendors—a recipe for strained relationships. 

On today’s blog, we’ll dig into some insights from GLWA’s experience moving from administratively-burdensome processes to an eSourcing solution that prioritizes stakeholder relationships and vendor engagement—and how that transformed those relationships (and ultimately, the utilities procurement outcomes) for the better.

Paper-based workflows are a recipe for severed relationships

When procurement teams rely on pen-and-paper evaluation processes, no one wins. Vendors are tasked with printing binders of material, factoring in time for shipping, and worrying in the back of their minds that their bid could be disqualified because documents go missing or they miss an addendum or clarification. Evaluators, who may already be overstretched from the demands of their primary job, become overwhelmed with the administrative burden of flipping through pages and pages of information—which might not all be relevant to that particular evaluator. And procurement teams may feel more like nagging overseers than relationship-builders as they continually check-in with delayed evaluators to keep projects on track.

GLWA was in the same boat. With 21 buyers who oversee purchases that include numerous stakeholders and evaluators per project, and a vendor pool of more than 2,400 vendors, complex paper-based practices were no longer sustainable. Internal stakeholders were frustrated because evaluation times were long and contract statuses felt like a black box. GLWA was understandably concerned that these project delays and lack of visibility would put vendor relationships at risk.

Strategic sourcing software doesn’t have to turn processes upside-down

Strategic sourcing software has the potential to increase stakeholder engagement and improve vendor relationships by making the procurement process more transparent and straightforward. With so many projects on the go, however, many procurement professionals don’t have the time or the resources to dedicate to strenuous change management. 

GLWA was no different; they already had strong foundational processes in place but needed a way to execute their processes efficiently. After all, a more efficient and stakeholder-friendly process leads to more satisfied customers and partners. GLWA turned to Bonfire to digitize their existing workflow, from solicitation to award, and then through contract management and vendor relationship management. 

eSourcing empowers procurement teams to improve results

GLWA’s stakeholders and vendors were able to begin using Bonfire immediately without formal training. Vendors could submit proposals and keep related materials updated in a more efficient and cost-effective manner, and internal stakeholders saw evaluation times get cut by five to seven days. These efficiency gains alone left stakeholders and vendors more satisfied with the strategic sourcing process, but the benefits went beyond efficiency for efficiency’s sake.

With less time devoted to administrative tasks, GLWA’s utilities procurement leaders were then able to structure their buyers in more strategic positions so that they could be more effective in their jobs. Additionally, GLWA launched a small business vendor initiative, with the goal of reaching out to small vendors and bringing them into the bid process. Bonfire made it easier for GLWA to engage more vendors, increase their vendor pool, and manage relationships with those vendors. 

To learn more about how improved evaluation timelines and transparency with Bonfire’s eSourcing solution led to better vendor relations and buyer satisfaction at GLWA, read the full customer success story.

Single-sign on (SSO) is becoming  a critical criteria in public sector software, and when looking at the benefits of SSO—not to mention, how lax many people are with password security—it isn’t hard to see why.

Perhaps your passwords aren’t as bad as “password123,” but maybe you reuse the same password on different accounts—adding a “!” to the end of your tried-and-true password when you’re asked to include a special character. 

We don’t blame you! As public sector organizations continue to invest more and more in software-as-a-service, the amount of online accounts that you log in to every day is growing. To keep things as simple as possible, it makes sense to try and recycle passwords. 

Unfortunately, that simple act of repeating a password opens up your organization to disastrous data breach risk. 

You’re likely no stranger to some of the high-profile data breaches of the past few years or the spread of ransomware attacks in the public sector. The truth is, no one is exempt from being a target; in 2019, a collection of 2.7 billion identity records, consisting of 774 million unique email addresses and 21 million unique passwords, were posted on the web for sale. And if you think you’re exempt because your agency is small, think again—43% of data breach victims are small businesses. 

To protect your organization from a data breach resulting from a stolen or weak password, SSO is here to help.

We sat down with Jay Rosenberger, Bonfire’s Director of IT, Security, and Compliance to get a better idea of what SSO is, why public sector organizations especially should be investing in SSO, and what the benefits of integrating SSO into your Bonfire platform are. 

What is SSO?

Jay: Single sign-on (SSO) is a method to authenticate the user to a website or system against a centrally managed identity provider (IdP). For Bonfire clients, this means your users can log into Bonfire using their existing username and password without the need to create and remember a new password.

How does SSO work?

Jay: When a user logs into Bonfire, the request to authenticate is sent back to your IdP (your authentication server) instead of ours. If the username and password are correct, access will be granted. The passwords used to authenticate against your IdP are never stored in Bonfire. 

Why is SSO especially important in the tech stack for public sector organizations? 

Jay: Data breach attacks happen every day and the chances of passwords being stolen from these breaches are increasing. With the rapid adoption of cloud-based services, ensuring that identities and credentials are controlled and protected becomes a challenge for organizations of all sizes.

Should one of your users leave the company, as soon as you disable their access on your IdP, they will no longer be able to access Bonfire. This helps reduce the time and risk of missing items during your employee offboarding process.

What security regulations should public sector IT teams be aware of and how can SSO help with compliance?

Jay: Many compliance regulations require a robust identity and access management program. As organizations offload services into third-party systems in the cloud, their risk increases. The use of SSO is a great way to help meet your compliance obligations and reduce risk. 

How does SSO improve user experience for employees?

Jay: Without the need to remember yet another password, your employees will be able to log into any service that supports SSO with their existing credentials. That means they won’t need to write a complex password down where it might be seen and the frequency of password resets is reduced. The result is a far less frustrating experience for employees which ultimately leads to greater employee satisfaction. 

How can SSO lower IT costs?

Jay: SSO can reduce time and effort in employee offboarding and reduce the complexity of identity and access management. 

Are there any other benefits of SSO you’d like to mention?

Jay: At the end of the day, the biggest benefit of SSO is greater security and compliance. With fewer passwords for employees to remember, reduced recycled passwords, more visibility into login activities, and a guarantee to meet compliance obligations, you can sleep easy knowing that your employees’ weak or reused passwords aren’t risking a security breach in your organization.

Why should Bonfire clients invest in SSO for their users? 

Jay: There are lots, but to name a few…a simpler user experience, reduced IT costs, increased security, reduced risk, and better compliance. Why wouldn’t you want SSO integrated into your Bonfire account? 

To take your Bonfire account security and compliance to the next level with SSO, connect your IT manager with your Bonfire client success manager today. 

In our annual State of the RFP report, we unearthed one scary statistic—12% of RFP projects receive only one submission. 

As a procurement professional, you know why this is a cause for concern. More competition in the procurement vendor selection process increases the likelihood that you will receive the best award value. After all, each additional vendor submission increases an RFP’s price spread—the difference between the highest and lowest priced proposals—by 3%. When there is little to no competition, procurement teams miss out on opportunities to ensure the best value, denying your organization significant cost savings. 

Before you go placing the blame on vendors, it may be time to put a mirror to your own vendor selection process. After all, as noted in the NIGP Business Council report on the topic, “a company’s quality response to the bidding process says as much about the agency issuing the RFP/IFB as it does about the supplier.” 

So why aren’t vendors bidding on your projects? We’ve got 6 reasons why vendors aren’t bidding on your RFPs…and what you can do about it.

1. Difficulty finding the right opportunities

Are you publishing your solicitations in relevant places? Newspaper advertisements or simply posting listing opportunities on your website may have worked at one point, but they’re no longer the place where vendors look for RFPs. Transitioning your RFP process to an eSourcing platform (like Bonfire) can expand your reach to more relevant vendors with online advertisement and submission, making it easier for vendors to find and submit opportunities. 

2. Time-consuming or expensive submission process

As a procurement professional, it’s important to remember that complex RFPs can consume a lot of time and resources. Vendors need to decide if the costs associated with producing a quality response are worth the effort and potential pay-off. Not to mention, when bid sites charge membership fees to see bids, submit an RFP response, or even to see details about the opportunity, vendors must also consider these costs. To make the process more manageable for vendors, audit your RFP to ensure all questions are integral to the decision-making process and make it easy and free to find RFP details.

3. Insufficient timeframe to respond

Just as it took your team a lot of time (not to mention all the intake meetings!) to get your RFP ready for bidding, vendors will need to spend a lot of time collecting documents, assembling numbers, and writing (and re-writing) their responses before they can submit their bid. Not allowing enough time for vendors to provide an adequate RFP response is a surefire way to diminish vendor competition.  

4. Unrealistic price requirements

Most procurement professionals know that weighing price too heavily in complex RFPs isn’t a good idea, because the cheapest option is not always the most valuable option. Even so, buyers may impose unrealistic price requirements. As a result, vendors may choose not to bid because they won’t be able to make a profit if they are awarded the project. Unrealistic price requirements, therefore, do more harm than good when it comes to your budget; when vendors self-select themselves out of the RFP bidding process, competition diminishes, limiting the likelihood that you will attain a quality product or service at the right price. 

5. Specifications are too broad

When RFP specifications are too broad, that lack of clarity makes it difficult for a vendor to determine your needs and submit a high-quality and relevant proposal. Not to mention, broad specifications make life more difficult for your evaluators, who are trying to make an apples-to-apples comparison to determine the best value for your organization. Convoluted answers due to a lack of understanding of the specifications required can weaken the validity of that comparison. Clear specifications make it possible for vendors to make their pricing decisions, leading to a better process for them and a better outcome for you.

6. Specifications are too specific

Okay we get it, we just said that you should ensure your RFP specifications are specific, and now we’re saying make sure they’re not too specific. Trust us, it’s not because we can’t make up our minds; finding that balance between specifications that are too broad and specifications that are too specific is integral to an effective RFP. If your questions are too rigid, they leave out any opportunity to propose other solutions or include new technologies that you may not have even considered. Your job entails purchasing a diversity of goods and services for multiple departments and teams, which means you can’t be a deep subject matter expert in every area, and that’s okay! Keep an open mind by keeping your specifications broad enough that any vendor who can meet your procurement needs has the opportunity to bid, regardless of whether or not they meet your original expectations.

Procurement is the bridge between the vendor community and a buying organization; it’s up to procurement teams to understand the obstacles that prevent vendors from bidding and eliminate those barriers. To get a better idea of how other public sector organizations are benchmarking in their vendor competition, download the 2019 State of the RFP report.

Excel has become ubiquitous in offices across the globe. It’s familiar and most people have at least basic understanding (I mean, who doesn’t have “proficiency in Excel” listed on their resume?). But, sometimes spreadsheets can leave procurement professionals feeling spread thin. When submissions are coming in for bids and RFPs, you may feel a lot of stress and pressure to ensure that these documents remain organized, error-free, and properly formatted.

When teams switch to an eSourcing tool with an online order list feature, there’s an instant time savings and removal of human error between submissions and analysis for evaluations. Bonfire’s order list tool is called Bid Tables and it has been celebrated as “Excel with super powers and no learning curve”—and we couldn’t agree more.

Build a Seamless Experience

Having a consistent format across submissions enables an easier process from start to finish. When formats and expectations are standardized from the get-go, it ensures that you’re getting the information you need to make decisions. It also ensures that the information is correct, and mitigates the potential for human error that often accompanies manually formatting spreadsheets and importing data into Excel.

When the information is clearly lined up and ready for export, it can be easily shared with all stakeholders in the project.

Accurately Handle Large Data Sets

With an order lists feature in place, it’s easier to filter and sort through large data sets. The tool can handle hundreds of lines of data, which can help you prioritize data and trust that the information you need can be accurately represented and sorted. 

You can perform deeper analyses when you can trust that the data maintains its integrity throughout the process. Bid Tables ensure the numbers provided by vendors remain accurate and don’t fall victim to human error (an estimated 88% of spreadsheets unfortunately do). When you use a Bid Table template, the numbers can be locked and the tool will show you if any changes have been made. A structured format and a clear history can often be impossible to implement when critical data is siloed in Excel documents.

Bid Tables also allow you to view, filter, and sort by aggregate costs, or other quantitative information—like nutrition values on food products, or quantities of sports equipment. With these calculations automated, you can easily see the most affordable overall costs or segment by vendor. This gives your team direct insight into the numbers that matter.

Make Faster Decisions

It’s one thing to be able to clearly see the costs in order to make a decision. But, with Bid Tables, you can apply any changes that need to be made. Changes like adding a discount or accounting for quantity can easily be applied to help you make quicker decisions. This also ensures that the data remains accurate. It’s easy to trust that the math is correct, as you don’t need to apply any manual formulas or double-check the results like you might in Excel.

Being able to trust the data and apply any modifications can help you arrive at decisions more quickly and perform richer analysis. When you can instantly apply changes to a large data sets, you eliminate the time it would take to apply manual changes. You can also toggle these adjustments and export the tables directly to quickly share with project stakeholders so that they can see the factors that influenced the decisions that were made.

If you’re not already streamlining your RFP process by making specific quantitative and qualitative requests of your vendors, you could be missing out on rich analysis and precious hours of focusing on what actually matters. Using Questionnaires can help your evaluation team cut through pages of information to quickly obtain the accurate and succinct information they need to assign an accurate score.

Implementing a structured RFP process that includes questionnaires is becoming increasingly common, and for good reason. Questionnaires are often used in projects such as ERP software evaluations, obtaining professional services, collecting construction bids, collecting references, and ensuring terms and conditions are met. Having a structured way for your vendors to respond ensures that your evaluation team can access important information quickly and easily as they complete their evaluations.

Here are just a few ways adding a formal Questionnaire and structuring your RFPs can benefit your team:

Direct Responses

Meticulously reading a PDF page-by-page and line-by-line gets the job done, but at the cost of your team’s time. Often, PDFs from external vendors contain a lot of marketing jargon that isn’t always relevant and can obscure the focus from the details you need to know to move forward with the submission.

When the submission process moves online, you can remove the need to sift through pages by asking vendors the direct questions needed to ensure you’re getting the best services for the best value. With Questionnaires, there are controls you can use to limit how much information can be submitted to ensure that only the relevant information you require is present in the proposal. The guess work is taken out of the equation – there’s a clear question for vendors to respond to and clear answers for buyers to compare.

Fast Evaluations

Having direct responses ensures that you are getting the facts you need and also speeds up the evaluation process. Both qualitative and quantitative results are promptly available and automatically tabulated once submissions close. With an eSourcing tool, you can quickly see quantitative information; such as if a service will be within your budget with immediate insight into the lowest responsible bidder for a project.

When projects require a high level of detail, written answers can be collected and compiled side-by-side for a faster evaluation process. On average, RFP projects spend 31 days in the evaluation stage; when the information is available, accessible, and concise, it helps alleviate lengthy evaluations.

No Missed Sections
Building out a Questionnaire with mandatory question-sets ensures that vendors are aware of the essential sections and no critical details are missing from the final submission.

“In 2014, nearly 30% of disqualifications occurred as a result of missing documents. This has decreased consistently and is now at 16%.”

Missing information is often one of the top reasons why vendors are disqualified. The risk for missing information is mitigated when buyer expectations are clearly outlined in the submission process and when there is an automatic reminder to alert vendors when information or supporting documents are missing. When eSourcing platforms utilize Questionnaires, buyers can feel confident that submissions aren’t missing any key information that could influence the decision making process.

These are just a few key advantages to Questionnaires. For more information about how Questionnaires can help you collect qualitative information quickly, request a demo.

At Bonfire, we understand your needs are continually evolving. We’re always looking to our clients for guidance on today’s challenges and to understand how we’re helping you find solutions. 2019 was no exception with the introduction of new offerings and feature enhancements designed to deliver best-practices, optimize workflows, and increase bid competition. 

Here’s a recap of some of the exciting things that launched this year at Bonfire.

New Services and Continuous Learning

Services define a significant part of the Bonfire experience. We often hear that our people make a big difference in the adoption and ongoing engagement with eSourcing inside their organization. This year, we’re excited to launch more opportunities for customers to learn and growth with Bonfire.

Check out all of the best practices content here:

Multi-category Decisions, Questionnaires, and Bid Tables
Contract and Performance Management, Centralizing Procurement

Feature Launches that Strengthen Public-Sector Workflows

Proposal Analysis

Proposal Analysis adds intuitive visuals to Bonfire that make it easy to compare and contrast different data points such as how an individual vendor performed in relation to the top and average score in each criteria segment.

Then, you can filter and display the data in different ways to fuel more productive consensus meetings, negotiations, recommendations, and during vendor debrief meetings.

Quick Online Bid Entry

Quick Online Bid Entry makes it easy for vendors to enter detailed order list pricing online. As a buyer, you define your specific needs, such as quantity, brand, size, etc., then all that your vendors need to do is fill in your pricing form.

Results are auto-calculated and easily analyzed in Bonfire to award by vendor, basket, or even line-item.

Custom Event Management

Custom Event Management lets you add events to your official timeline and brings more of your project online in one central place so everyone is on the same page.

Event types include vendor-facing events such as pre-bid meetings, interviews, and public bid openings, or internal-facing events such as pre-evaluation kick-offs and consensus meetings.

Requested Information Management

Requested Information Management makes it easy to group and organize the information that you need your vendors to provide. Simply add a new group and then add, drag, or drop the corresponding documents or data.

From there, you can reorder groups and documents to make it easy for vendors to understand exactly what they need to provide.

Product Launches that Help Buyers Receive More Bids

Extending your pool of vendors is critical to increase your competition and in turn, get better quality for a better price. In an effort to support you in doing so, we’ve launched a new vendor portal designed to connect you with vendors who are already working with other Bonfire customers as well as with vendors who are interested in public sector opportunities.

Every public opportunity you post will be available to the growing Bonfire vendor community.

An RFP evaluation process goes beyond simple bids and price-only decisions and requires assessing both qualitative and quantitative factors. For many public sector organizations, this is where the largest spending decisions are made. The impact that these decisions make can have a ripple effect that can be felt for years, which is why making the right choice is essential to your organization.

Here are 4 common pitfalls buying organizations make during the evaluation process and how you can avoid them in order to achieve the best possible outcomes. 

Mistake 1: Weighting the price too high

Why it matters
Weighting the price high is often seen as being “price conscious,” but it can skew the outcomes that you are trying to achieve. Organizations that value price too highly run the risk of buying goods or services that are inexpensive, but that also under-deliver.  

*According to Bonfire State of the RFP data insights, a 15% increase in price will change the outcome of one in three RFPs* 

How to achieve better outcomes
Best practices indicate that weighting price at 20-30% is ideal. Before you begin a project, determine what criteria will truly make the difference between success and failure and assign weight accordingly. If you are getting pressured by the business unit influencing the project, show them how increasing the price weighting would impact the outcome so that they understand the implications.

Mistake 2: Unclear evaluation scales

Why it matters
Some teams don’t use a scale at all and allow evaluators to assign their own point value to each component, leading to confusion and too much variation in scores. Others use a three-point scale, which doesn’t offer enough variation in score and makes it difficult to make a significant distinction between proposals.

How to achieve better outcomes
A five to ten point scale offers evaluators a good range so that they are able to make distinctions between evaluations. By clearly establishing this rule, you’ll enable consistency and alignment across stakeholders when running an evaluation. 

Mistake 3: Separating price scales

Why it matters
There is a phenomenon called ‘the lower bid bias.’ When evaluators are made aware of price when evaluating qualitative factors, a systematic bias occurs toward the lowest bidder. This was proven conclusively during a study conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Favouring the lowest bid regardless of qualitative factors could have similar negative outcomes as weighting price too highly in an evaluation.

How to achieve better outcomes
To eliminate bias, the study recommended a two-stage process where price is revealed to the same group of evaluators as qualitative factors, but only after they have evaluated the non-price components of a bid. Alternatively, you could have a different evaluation group for pricing than you do for qualitative factors. 

Mistake 4: Not making decisions by consensus

Why it matters
Many teams attempt to simplify their process by averaging their evaluator’s scores. However if one evaluator gives a score of 2 out of 5, and another a 5, then the average score of a 3.33 isn’t a truly representative conclusion. It could suggest that there was a misunderstanding either in the proposal or the scoring criteria, or even a scoring bias that could impact the final decision. 

*37% of RFPs feature a lack of consensus, indicating this is a commonly occurring issue among evaluators.*

How to achieve better outcomes
When there is a significant variance in scores teams should hold consensus meetings to understand the discrepancy and come to an agreement. It can be useful to complete all comments and scoring beforehand so that the facilitator is able to focus the conversation on the areas of disagreement. A well-run meeting can get evaluators to a place of understanding and help outliers come to an agreed-upon decision. 

How technology can help

Using technology to conduct your sourcing events is more efficient than with email, Excel, and paper. This gives your team more time and focus to run effective evaluations and ultimately achieve better outcomes.  

Do you want to uncover how Bonfire can help you run seamless evaluations? Attend one of our weekly live product demonstrations to learn more.

In the final episode in the Fall Webinar Series for Clients, we reviewed the findings of the 2019 State of the RFP, an annual benchmarking study of the public sector RFP process.

Using data from over 6,000 public sector RFPs with a combined spend of $1.4 billion, this report gives us a glimpse into how a typical RFP process unfolds.

Read on for a quick summary, or download the full State of the RFP report here.

How long is the average RFP?

The average public sector RFP is 116 pages. This varies somewhat by organization type.

The average RFP for a K12 school district is significantly longer. At 150 pages, it’s over twice as long as the average RFP for a higher education institution.

The RFP process adds up to a lot of paper: around 8,000 pages a year for the average public sector organization.

How is the average RFP set up?

Public sector RFPs on average ask for five distinct pieces of data/documentation from vendors. This might include forms, examples of past work, certifications, references, pricing information, or other documents.

Proposals are typically evaluated on eight criteria.

The average RFP evaluation is divided into two to three different evaluation stages. The purpose of these stages is to manage the complexity of the evaluation, by dividing different types of proposal content up for individual review.

The most common structure of evaluation stages is: 

• Mandatory stage, consisting of pass/fail criteria, evaluated by the procurement team
• Technical information, evaluated by internal Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
• Pricing information, evaluated separately by procurement, finance, or internal SMEs

Advantages to using evaluation stages include the ability to:

• Allow unique groups of evaluators to review only the proposal content that is relevant to their expertise, saving time  
• Avoid bias by evaluating pricing after the rest of the proposal review
• Improve confidentiality and control over the evaluation process

What’s the outcome of the average RFP?

The average winning RFP score is 87.9%—meaning that the winning proposal met nearly 90% of the organization’s criteria.

Furthermore, the average public sector RFP saves 22%. This is calculated as the difference between the winning vendor’s price and the average proposal price for that RFP.

Nobody would claim that the RFP process is perfect—there is always room to improve and evolve the process to meet today’s challenges of fast-changing markets and increasing demand.

However, this is a positive outcome! This study demonstrates that the RFP process is an effective method for organizations to get the goods and services they need at a good price, while following a fair and transparent process.

For more insight into the public sector RFP process, download the full State of the RFP report here. 

The third instalment of our series on the 2019 State of the RFP. 

No procurement team is an island; in fact, procurement teams act more like bridges between their organizations’ internal departments and external vendors, helping both parties accomplish their goals.

New research from the 2019 State of the RFP underscores the collaborative nature of the job. Using first-party data from the Bonfire Strategic Sourcing platform, the study finds that for every buyer in an organization, there are 12 evaluators and 23 vendors on average.

The relationship between procurement teams and their evaluators is paramount to the success of your procurement decisions. Use these insights from the State of the RFP to work better together with evaluators, for a smoother RFP evaluation process and better outcomes.

Right-size your RFP evaluation group

The number of evaluators involved in an RFP depends on the scope of the project. However, the average RFP project includes three to four evaluators. This is consistent with the best practice of including a minimum of three evaluators.

Healthcare organizations include the highest number of evaluators per project, with five evaluators, while K12 school districts include the fewest, with two to three on average.

Cut down on evaluator workload with evaluation groups

Evaluation groups allow you to segment proposal information into different groups. For example, separate Pricing for you to review on the procurement team, Technical Requirements to be reviewed by IT, and Experience or History of Past Work to be reviewed by the end user team.

Structuring the evaluation this way has a few key benefits:

• Faster evaluations. With fewer documents to review, evaluators can finish their piece more quickly.
• Informed scoring. Evaluators are asked to score only the components that they know the most about—resulting in a more informed, educated decision. 
• Less risk. With proposal documents segmented, procurement can control the process more, reducing the risk of bias and interference.

The average RFP evaluation includes two to three evaluation groups—but 5% include more than five!

Ensure everyone’s voice is heard through consensus analysis

Thirty-seven percent of evaluator scores lacked consensus (defined in the study as a <30% difference between any two evaluators’ scores for a given criterion). A further 45% had a ‘soft consensus’ (a difference of 10 – 30% in any two evaluators’ scores for a given criterion).

Evaluator disagreement is not a bad thing, but such high levels indicate a disconnect. Rather than adding scores up and calling it a day, procurement teams should be conducting some form of consensus analysis to identify and resolve significant outlier scores to ensure decisions are made for the right reason—and can be defended.

Procurement teams are not making the final call on a vendor, but they do have an important role to play in moderating the evaluation to:

• Ensure each evaluator’s opinion is heard and recorded
• Resolve major scoring discrepancies due to misunderstanding or missing information
• Reduce subjectivity and bias

Provide a seamless online scoring experience

With each vendor proposal coming in at 116 pages on average, the typical RFP evaluation process involves the review of nearly 500 pages of vendor documentation within an average evaluation period of 31 days.

When you’re managing the RFP evaluation on paper, that means physically carting binders and boxes of paper to evaluators’ offices. Even if you’re sending proposal information by email, that’s a lot of copying and pasting of scores, and sending of attachments—and subsequently a lot of opportunity for error.

An online platform for evaluators to log in, review documents, and score proposals in one place is the single biggest investment you can make into better evaluator relationships. It allows evaluators to provide their input without the administrative hassle.

With these tips, you can ensure that the experience of serving on an evaluation committee is not one to be dreaded or avoided, but rather a refreshingly pleasant and productive experience.

For more RFP benchmarks to improve your procurement function, download the 2019 State of the RFP Report.

Legislation passed this fall makes it possible for local government and school districts in New Jersey to use electronic procurement technology in their procurement activities. 

Read on for a quick primer on Assembly Bill 3112, and what it means for your procurement team! 

The Basics of A-3112

Who is impacted: New Jersey organizations subject to “Local Public Contracts Law” and “Public School Contracts Law.” This does not impact those subject to “State College Contracts Law.” 

What changes: Procurement teams are now authorized to use electronic procurement technologies for the procurement of goods, services, public works construction, and sale of surplus personal and real property. 

Procurement teams must continue to advertise projects in their local newspapers, but can also post and receive vendor submissions online. 

Why: eProcurement technology makes it easier to carry out the procurement process while maintaining the integrity of the process and decreasing the risk of litigation. The assembly’s analysis found that while there is an upfront cost to implementing eProcurement, in the long run local costs are predicted to decrease as a result. 

Three key benefits of eProcurement

Using eProcurement technology to post bid and RFP opportunities online and receive submissions has many benefits. 

Efficiency

Bringing the procurement process online frees up your procurement team from routine administrative tasks such as: 

• Receiving and checking paper submissions
• Scanning in documents
• Creating Excel scorecards and copying-and-pasting scores

The process is easier for vendors, too, giving them one online location to view all project information (including any addenda or Q&A responses), then make their submission online at their convenience.

With less paperwork, procurement teams are able to run bid and RFP projects up to twice as fast. 

Consistency and standardization 

Centralizing the bid and RFP process brings all of your organization’s bids and RFPs into one central location. This makes it easy to see where you’re at, including the progress of all active projects, and what’s coming up next. 

You can also create bid and RFP templates to enforce a standard project set-up across all buyers, ensuring that all the compliance boxes are checked. 

Easy reporting

By managing the bid and RFP process online, you immediately eliminate the challenges of data storage and accessibility that comes along with paper files. All vendor records, proposal information, and scoring summaries are captured in one online platform. It’s easy to customize and export reports at the click of a button.