Industry: Commercial

With higher scrutiny and policy tightening, procurement teams must be confident in their ability to make fair, transparent, and robust procurement decisions. Recognizing and mitigating risk is a well-honed skill in procurement professionals’ arsenal already. However there are some areas of risk which are not immediately apparent.

Drawing on an analysis of $3B in procurement decisions made in the Bonfire Strategic Sourcing Platform, this webinar investigates three key components in the RFP process to determine their impact on the performance and outcome of your RFPs.

These insights inform advice on how better tools can help teams eliminate risk and make procurement decisions with certainty.

Procurement teams have a strategic opportunity to use technology to gain visibility and control over their indirect spend, decreasing organizational risk and increasing cost savings. Join seasoned procurement leader Andrew Wolfe, former Director of Procurement for OpenText, to discuss the common challenges of indirect spend management, and how strategic sourcing platforms like Bonfire can help.

With rising costs and an aging population, procurement teams are under pressure to find the balance between best outcomes for patients and clinicians, and best value for taxpayer dollars. This means employing increasingly dynamic and innovative RFx strategies that focus on achieving a specific outcome, rather than meeting a predefined list of specs.

However, trying to manage these types of projects through paper, Excel, and email results in a major coordination challenge and mountains of paperwork.

In this webinar, hear from three healthcare procurement leaders about how they use Bonfire eSourcing to manage the evaluation process for best value decisions.

Top takeaways

• Overview of best value procurement and its key characteristics
• Survey of key features and limitations of basic bidding tools, ERPs, and eSourcing platforms
• Real-life examples of how eSourcing platforms enable procurement teams to manage a more efficient evaluation process

ERPs are ubiquitous in organizations. They excel at core transactional tasks, but they often fall short when it comes to handling processes that require flexibility, adaptability, and collaboration.

ERPs aren’t going anywhere, but there are ways to improve your organization’s procurement process by choosing modular solutions that work alongside your ERP and provide a more customized environment to accommodate different procurement strategies and processes.

Sourcing, supplier management, and contract management often require a significant amount of cross-departmental collaboration and a high degree of flexibility, which makes them a good fit for a modular solution.

Get expert advice on what to look for in a modular sourcing solution and how to prepare for a successful implementation.

As more and more work goes remote, public sector organizations are adopting software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions more readily than ever before. From collaboration tools, to online learning platforms, to eProcurement, public agencies are investing in software that will help them run business-as-usual, even as they work from home. But the data shows that some procurement teams may still be struggling to make efficient yet informed SaaS RFP decisions.

Back in January, we produced a webinar in partnership with NIGP all about buying SaaS. We took a look at some SaaS metrics compiled from 60 SaaS procurement projects, involving 400 evaluators and 260 proposals. We found that the average evaluation time on these projects was 252 days. In contrast, the average public sector RFP takes 57 days.

These longer evaluation times for SaaS point to the fact that procurement teams may be struggling to strike the balance of making quick yet informed SaaS RFP decisions. It’s understandable that this balance is hard to hit, considering the SaaS business model has really only been popularly adopted in the last 5-10 years. But in this cultural climate where SaaS is no longer a nice-to-have, public agencies can no longer afford 252-day-long project cycle times.

We get it, with its unique business model, cloud-based data storage, and security considerations, purchasing SaaS for your agency may feel like a daunting task—but it doesn’t have to be. On today’s blog, we’re outlining 3 procurement foundations that will demystify SaaS and help you make efficient and well-informed SaaS procurement decisions that will serve your constituents even in uncertain times such as these.

Get to know the SaaS business model

Whereas your agency may have previously gained access to software after multi-year binding contracts and arduous installation processes, the SaaS business model is different. SaaS employs a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. That’s why SaaS is sometimes referred to as “on-demand software.”

For procurement teams, this shift should be a cause for celebration! When a software product is purchased and ends up not being the right fit for your agency (it happens), you’re no longer roped into multi-year—even decade-long—binding contracts that leave you helpless to change. Instead, by paying a monthly or annual subscription price, you have a lot more power to switch SaaS vendors or negotiate changes that meet your needs.

Understand SaaS vs on-premise software

SaaS is synonymous with cloud-based software. Cloud infrastructure refers to the hardware and software components—such as servers, storage, a network, and virtualization software—that are needed to support the computing requirements of a cloud computing model. The opposite of cloud-based software is on-premise software, which requires a lot of IT involvement, manual updates, and significant costs for software updates and maintenance.

To get a better understanding of the benefits of SaaS vs on-premise software, think about the Microsoft Office suite. When Microsoft Office was on-premise, you had to use a compact disc to install the software, and all your saved data from Word or Excel was stored on your computer’s hard drive. Now, Microsoft Office has migrated to a SaaS model, where no installation ins required—instead, you log in to your Microsoft account on your web browser, and your data is stored in the cloud.

Don’t forget the second “S”

We’ve covered much of the “software” part of “software-as-a-service,” and when a lot of procurement teams make SaaS purchases, they stop there. But, as a procurement professional, you can’t forget the second “S”—service.

When bringing on a SaaS vendor, you want to know that you’ll be supported through prompt and high-quality service to ensure that you get a return on your investment. Vendors are also motivated to provide the service that will make you successful so that you will continue to renew your subscription.

When looking for a vendor that will provide quality SaaS customer service, consider:

• If you’ll be assigned an Account Manager or Client Success Manager who will get to know your unique needs and challenges.
• If there will be on-going training so that users can become experts in the product.
• If there will be support and training when new products or updates are released.
• If there will be in-app product walkthroughs to enable user self-teaching.
• If there will be user conferences and meetups (once we’re done social distancing, of course!).

There are a lot of considerations to make when selecting a SaaS vendor for your public sector agency, especially when collaborating in an online environment is more critical than ever before. We hope that some of the basics we covered in this blog post enable you to make more informed and more efficient SaaS RFP decisions. If you’re searching for a SaaS solution to bring your procurement processes online during COVID-19, Bonfire is giving public agencies free access to the Bonfire Sourcing platform until July 31, 2020. Learn more here.

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.

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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.

By implementing a paperless procurement process using software like eProcurement, every procurement team has the opportunity to improve their organization’s sustainability — while also saving time and money, reducing risk, and driving more value. In this infographic, we break down just how much paper has been saved by our clients.

See the Bonfire platform for yourself in a live 20-minute product demo.