Industry: K-12

Over the past two years, K-12 students across North America have had to transition back and forth between virtual and in-person learning. For many, ongoing disruptions to learning routines have had a negative impact on mental health and academic success.

A recent survey conducted by EdWeek found that high schoolers are getting lower grades, procrastinating more, and feeling more distracted by anxiety than they were before the pandemic. And in October 2021, three leading pediatric health organizations declared that the pandemic-related rise in child and adolescent mental health issues is a national emergency.

Given the challenges elementary and high school students are facing right now, K-12 procurement teams have a unique opportunity to make a positive impact through their purchasing decisions.

Today on the blog, we’re sharing how eProcurement can help you deliver that impact and make student-first buying decisions. These tips will help you eliminate roadblocks in your procurement process, so you can support the success of young learners during the pandemic and beyond.

Student-first buying decisions are collaborative

Many procurement teams are geographically distant from the schools they support. And they may also be removed from the day-to-day realities of virtual learning. That can make it difficult to understand the needs of students in the classroom.

If procurement teams and internal clients don’t have a strong system in place to support collaboration, the result can be purchases that aren’t aligned with student needs, lengthy project timelines, negative relationships between stakeholders, and even rogue spending.

An easy-to-use procurement platform can alleviate these issues by providing a central place for procurement teams and educators to work together. With internal discussions and online evaluations directly within Bonfire, stakeholders can collaborate to define and respond to student needs with the best possible purchasing decisions.

Student-first buying decisions are responsive

With public health measures changing frequently throughout the pandemic, procurement teams and internal stakeholders have had to pivot to help students learn safely and effectively. On top of that, educational technology is always evolving. Students’ future success will depend on having access to the latest tools and software.

When procurement teams and K-12 stakeholders rely on manual methods, staying on top of those needs is a challenge. Along with being labour-intensive and time-consuming, manual bidding processes that involve multiple systems and complex tabulations increase the risk of information being missed or miscalculated. That can translate to low confidence in the decision-making process, poor audit trails, and student needs being overlooked.

With eProcurement, teams spend less time managing administrative burden and more time working with vendors and educators to make efficient student-first buying decisions. In Bonfire, all evaluators review and score submissions in one central place and auto-tabulated results ensure that bids are always reviewed and scored accurately.

Student-first buying decisions are compliant

K-12 schools rely on grants and government funding to deliver the best possible learning experience for students. To continue receiving support, they depend on procurement partners to maintain compliance in the bidding process.

The more time procurement teams spend on the administrative burden of demonstrating compliance, the less time they have to spend on optimizing outcomes for students. While it may seem far removed from the student experience, these inefficiencies can have a negative impact.

With eProcurement, K-12 purchasing teams and internal stakeholders get an airtight audit trail of all interactions without extra administrative effort. Bonfire lets you centralize your current workflow in a customizable platform, ensuring every step of the procurement process is tracked and easy to export.

Boost collaboration, responsiveness and compliance with Bonfire

eProcurement empowers your K-12 procurement team to make student-first buying decisions every time. See how Bonfire can help.

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!

Hear from Andrea Tena, Contracts Administrator at San Antonio Independent School District, about the challenges of school board procurement and the impact of bringing the sourcing process online on the Bonfire platform.

SAISD’s successful adoption of Bonfire was the subject of a previous Bonfire case study. In this on-demand webinar, Tena shares more about the challenges of their manual paper process, their reasons for implementing Bonfire eSourcing, and the impact it has had on the procurement team.