Many public organizations operate in a partially or completely decentralized procurement model. This means that while the procurement team handles the majority of bids and RFPs, some departments or divisions (commonly Facilities or Public Works) run their own separate procurement process. 

All too often, this results in a situation where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, leading to organizational risk and missed opportunities. Many teams are looking to centralize procurement spend under one umbrella to gain better visibility into the big picture.

In the second instalment of the Bonfire Fall Webinar Series for Clients, we demonstrate how Bonfire makes it easier to centralize procurement across the organization to realize the benefits of visibility and consistency. 

Watch the full recording, or read on for a brief summary.

Managing multiple departments in Bonfire 

Procurement teams can establish different Departments within the Bonfire platform. This allows teams to centralize all of their organization’s procurement activities in one place, while preserving a measure of separation between different buying departments.  

You can: 

• Separate and report on procurement activities by department 
• Limit user access between departments 
• Conduct granular reporting by department 
• Search projects or contracts by department 

Here are three key benefits of managing the procurement activities of multiple departments in one place: 

1. Easy reporting 

Bonfire makes it easy to view and report on procurement activities across the organization. 

With all projects occurring through the Bonfire platform, organizations ensure complete and consistent audit reports for each individual project, as well as consistent data and file storage. 

Side-by-side comparison of different departments’ cycle times. 

Not only that, leaders can access Project Insights which provide department-specific metrics on: 

• • RFP cycle length
  • Number of proposals 
  • Savings generated

This can be used for quick and easy reporting, as well as to inform future process improvements or bottlenecks that need to be resolved. 

2. Process consistency and compliance

When procurement is decentralized, it’s virtually impossible to ensure that all teams are following the correct process, adhering to procurement policy, and using up-to-date files. 

This results in greater exposure to risk, as well as a confusing experience for vendors who might bid on multiple opportunities with different departments. 

When procurement is centralized in Bonfire, teams can use Project Templates to enforce consistency in project set-up, minimize errors, and ensure compliance checks and balances are in place. These standardized templates have the added bonus of helping new employees get up and running quickly. 

Examples of Project Templates in Bonfire. 

Procurement users in all departments can use templates every time they create a new project, ensuring their project is pre-set with: 

• Consistent language in project descriptions 
• Standard public files
• Standard internal files (for example, a go-live checklist or manual) 
• Fields for requested forms or documents that are required for each project 

Any updates made by the procurement team can be universally applied, taking away the guessing game of having multiple versions floating around the organization. 

3. Effective vendor management 

There’s nothing worse than realizing that a poorly-performing vendor has just been contracted to work with your organization again by a different department. 

When your vendor management is centralized across the organization, this doesn’t happen. You can maintain one vendor record across the organization, giving other teams full context into existing or past contracts and vendor performance. 

An example of a vendor record in Bonfire. 

Teams can also set up common vendor lists, saving time and providing efficiencies when running similar projects. 

Schedule a live demo to see how Bonfire could work for your procurement organization.

Bonfire is now available for purchase on the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR), enabling public agencies to directly procure Bonfire’s sourcing and contract management solution at preferred pricing. 

Over 250 public procurement teams already use the Bonfire platform to manage their bid and RFP process online, unlocking greater efficiency, reduced risk, and increased vendor competition. Now it’s even easier for Texas DIR customers to implement Bonfire and bring these benefits to your organization. 

Through Bonfire’s Cooperative Contract with the DIR, your team can: 

• Save money, by leveraging volume buying power to access discounted pricing
• Save time, by avoiding the lengthy RFx process and using the DIR’s competitively-bid contract
• Make a confident decision, with a well-vetted contract that is guaranteed to comply with state purchasing requirements.

“Through the DIR Cooperative Contract, we’ll be able to extend the availability of our procurement solutions to other state and civic agencies with immediate access and cost savings,” said Corry Flatt, CEO and Founder of Bonfire.

Learn more about the benefits of procurement digitization 

For Region 10 Education Service Centre, digitizing the procurement process on Bonfire has meant less time spent scanning and photocopying, reduced risk of human error from manual steps, and the ability to involve more evaluators in their decisions. 

We’re delighted to congratulate 13 Bonfire clients who have been recognized with the National Procurement Institute’s Achievement of Excellence in Procurement® (AEP) award. 

 The AEP program encourages the development of excellence as well as continued organizational improvement. Awarded annually, this prestigious award recognizes procurement organizations that demonstrate innovation, professionalism, productivity, e-procurement, and leadership attributes. 

Congratulations to the following Bonfire clients for achieving this designation: 

• Alameda County Water District 
• Atlanta Public Schools
• City of Frisco
• City of Irvine
• City of McKinney
• Clark County School District 
• County of Ventura
• Denton County
• Eastern Municipal Water District 
• Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District 
• Gwinnett County Public Schools
• San Mateo County Transit District 
• University Health Network

 At Bonfire, we are proud to partner with procurement teams to advance the public procurement profession. Procurement teams play a crucial role in ensuring that public sector spending decisions are made fairly and maximize value for the communities they serve. The ripple effect of responsible and ethical procurement decisions extends beyond the direct end users, to the supplier community and wider society.

 We congratulate the AEP honourees on their dedication to continuous improvement and innovation of public procurement.

For more inspiring stories of public procurement’s impact, read the eBook Procurement Beyond Paperwork.  

We’re sitting down with procurement professionals in different organizations to hear about how they approach their work, how Bonfire fits into their day-to-day, and the resources and tools that keep them on track.

This month’s guest is Amy Tejirian, Procurement Officer at BCNET. Amy collaborates with BCNET’s 25 member colleges, universities, and research institutes across British Columbia on a diverse range of sourcing projects. Needless to say, she gets things done! Here’s more on how she does it.

Tell me a bit about your role, and how you got there?

I’m the procurement officer here, so I’m involved with anything to do with procurement. We’re a collaborative sourcing organization, and my role involves working together with the 25 different colleges and institutions in BC on procurement. Each of them is very unique—we work with different types of institutions, in different locations.

Once an opportunity has been identified, I start off by engaging with the working group on what they’re looking for, and what kind of procurement it will be. I work closely with them to facilitate the evaluation, and then once there is a successful proponent, I will engage in negotiations and draft the contracts.

I’ve been here for a little over a year. Prior to that, I drafted and negotiated contracts for Vancouver Coastal Health. Before that, I was a contracts lawyer in Florida’s Department of Health for ten years.

What do you like about procurement?

I like working in groups and hearing what each different person brings to the table. Everyone on an evaluation committee has different expertise and experience.

I also enjoy that when you’re doing procurements, you become a mini-expert on all of these specific topics. We’re procuring a broad range of goods and services, and it’s never the same thing twice. All of a sudden, now I know so much about things I would never have known about otherwise, like elevator maintenance and computer networking and custodial supplies. I like that aspect of it.

Take me through a typical day.

There’s no typical day—it changes day-to-day depending on what projects are on the go and which stage I am at in the procurement.

Usually there are many projects going on at once. For one project I might be at the drafting stage, for another it could be pre-evaluation workshop, and for others I’ll be in contract negotiations.

With so many projects on the go in different stages, how do you keep track of it all?

I write everything down in meetings, or my co-op student helps me with that. I’m taking notes a lot, so I review those every day and refresh where I’m at in my to-do list, what’s next, and what has the soonest deadline and needs to take priority.

How does Bonfire fit into your day?

I use it on a daily basis—I’m a power user.

In the posting phase, I can see who’s pulling up the documents and see the vendor Question and Answer. In the evaluation phase, I can check to see the progress of the evaluation groups, the discrepancies in scores. Today we’re having an evaluation meeting, and we’ll use it to go over their comments.

I also use the reports when I’m compiling recommendation reports.

How is the process different now as opposed to before you used Bonfire?

Prior to using Bonfire, it was all done by paper submission. People would have to arrive to submit by 4 o’clock, and you’d see people running to get there on time. And then all the paper! One project could have boxes and boxes of binders if you’re asking for multiple copies of proposals.

I like that everything is received electronically and scored electronically in the same place: the NDA, the conflict of interest, and all the documents. It’s great for record-keeping. I don’t have to have a hundred Excel worksheets. Everything is all there.

How does Bonfire help facilitate collaboration?

We have working group members from across the province. It’s easy to share proposals with the working group, because they can access them through Bonfire. Previously it would require either taking the documents to evaluators physically or having a courier take them. Then you had the added worry about them disposing of the documents or returning them.

During the evaluation meeting, it’s all on Bonfire. We pull it up, go over the comments, and discuss any discrepancies. If the evaluators need to adjust their scores, they also have their Bonfire account open, and they have the opportunity to do that in real-time so the score updates immediately.

As a Bonfire power user, working on the platform every day, how have you found the support from Bonfire team?

The Bonfire support is very responsive.

Another thing we noticed after attending the BC User Meetup is that Bonfire is open to user experience and how to improve it. It’s nice to know that a platform is listening to the people that use it every day.

What resources/websites/publications do you follow for industry info?

There are two organizations I follow: The Procurement Office with Paul Emanuelli, and The Procurement School with Maureen Sullivan.

They’re on top of procurement changes, and they offer good procurement webinars and seminars.

In your experience, what are the key skills for procurement professionals?

To listen to what the working group and what the organization really needs and wants.

They’re relying on you to facilitate the process so that they get the goods and services that they need: to facilitate their discussion, help them move forward if they’re at a standstill, and be a guide through the process.

What is some advice you have to offer for a career in procurement?

Don’t take anything personally. During negotiations or difficult parts of the processes, remember it’s not about you. Focus on the process.

In the legal field, a lot of things are very adversarial, but procurement is not like that. You’re working towards a mutually beneficial agreement. In the end, you want to be on the same page.

Read more stories of real procurement teams using Bonfire. 

Online procurement platforms like Bonfire have changed the way teams run their bids and RFPs: paper, email, and Excel are being replaced by a streamlined and fully online software that supports the entire procurement process, saving teams significant time by making the buying process easier, simpler, and more efficient.

However, when it comes to construction tenders, receiving valid bonds from bidding suppliers offline using paper can hamper your ability to get the greatest benefits from your platform.

These paper copies are not only time-consuming to obtain and submit on the vendor’s side, they add unnecessary complexity and prevent procurement teams from streamlining their entire process online.

Enter eBonding: an efficient, secure, and compliant alternative to paper bonds. Here’s how you can use Bonfire and eBonding to streamline your construction tenders online:

From paper to digital

eBonds are a recognized best practice. Simply put, eBonding brings paper bonds into a digital form.

eBonding providers offer a standalone online system where the parties to a bond can process their bonds in a digital format using digital signatures and seals. Vendors then obtain their bid bond as a PDF file, which has embedded digital certificates and can be verified online at any time during the time of the bond.

It is simple and easy for Bonfire users to use eBonds as part of their construction tenders:

• When creating your project and requirements for suppliers, indicate that you require digital bonds as part of a submission (this differs little from the instructions you’d provide using paper bonds)
•  You can choose to direct suppliers to a specific eBonding provider, or allow suppliers to choose their own (we would recommend exploring and vetting eBonding providers to understand their approach, functionality, and specific compliance).
• When setting up a construction tender in Bonfire, buyers can create an additional document slot for the bid bond during project setup (see below).

When the bidding vendor creates their submission, they upload their bid bond as a PDF into this document slot.

Once the project closes and evaluation begins, the buyer can then verify the bond with the eBonding provider and download an audit report as confirmation.

Benefits for vendors and buyers

With eBonding, vendors no longer need to rely on couriers or tie up staff time with the hand-delivery of paper bonds. Instead, they can submit their tenders and bid bonds from the comfort of their office, at the click of a button.

On the buyer’s side, eBonding allows procurement teams to run their entire construction tendering process within one online platform, eliminating hard-copies, boosting efficiency, and ensuring perfect compliance.

We’re sitting down with procurement professionals in different organizations to hear about how they approach their work, how Bonfire fits into their day-to-day, and the resources and tools that keep them on track.

This month’s guest is Joel Neaveill, Director of Purchasing at Louisville Metro Government in Louisville, Kentucky. Joel and his team are responsible for the management of over 1,100 contracts that assist in the programmatic and operational functions of the city. Needless to say, he gets things done! Here’s more on how he does it.

First of all, tell us a bit about your background and how you got to your current role?

I started my role with the city in January 2016. Prior to that I spent 16 years working for the Commonwealth of Kentucky in various program development and policy roles. I was asked to come work for the city to help provide some improvements to the procurement process.

What’s your primary goal in your role?

My goal when I came here was to create a procurement program that is one with integrity, one with transparency, a trusted program, and one that makes sense to the common user.

In procurement in general, I’ve found that there is lack of knowledge of what the processes really are. We follow our state law, our local ordinance, and we also create policy — all of those have to make sense. What we try to do is make sense of things that aren’t written to make sense in layman’s terms. What I hope to do over the course of my time here is to demystify the process — not only to employees who are part of the process, but also externally to our vendors. We need to be the experts on that process so we can advise others.

How do you start your day?

Coffee. Then email.

My role is two-sided, overseeing purchasing and accounts payable; on the purchasing side, I find myself going to Bonfire first to see what new vendors have registered, what questions have been submitted, what activity we’re seeing on which projects, and if there have been any submissions overnight.

That’s kind of a cool thing about Bonfire — it used to be that projects would have a closing time of, let’s say, 3 o’clock, and the buyers would be listening for the door down the hall, and inevitably there would be someone coming in at the last minute to do the old ‘chu-chunk’ timestamp, and put it in the bid box. We don’t have people doing that anymore — it’s fantastic. From the comfort of their home, vendors can submit a response.

So I start the day by looking at the activity that’s happened, especially if there are any higher-profile bids or projects that have seen any activity.

How is that different now, compared to when you began your role?

When I joined, from day to day, if anyone asked me where a particular bid was, or who the buyer was, or what the status of any one bid was, I could not tell them, because I had no formal way of tracking that. I started looking at what available tools were out there for us.

I wondered, do we create our own, do we have the expertise to do that? I learned pretty quickly that we do not. From a manager’s perspective, I needed to get a handle on how to manage the workflow.

What publications/resources do you turn to for industry info?

My background is not procurement, but I’m always trying to learn more about the thing I’m focused on, so for the last two years I’ve just tried to immerse myself in everything procurement.

NIGP, the national institute for public procurement, has a daily feed of purchase issues and questions that are being raised across the country. So they might say, ‘hey has anyone done an RFP for salt trucks?’ or ‘how do you structure a public/private partnership on RFPs?’ People help to step in and advise on solutions to particular issues. The NIGP forums, publications, and certification process — I am completely absorbing these like a sponge.

I also read a lot of the publications of the GFOA – the Government Finance Officers Association. And whenever an issue comes up, I always go back to our law — I always go back to ask, what is the governing statute, what is the law, how is this issue framed within the context of the governing law? I have those bookmarked in my browser.

How do you stay organized?

One thing that helps is being able to compartmentalize priorities and know what can and cannot be delegated. If you can find tools that help you do that, and they’re not too incredibly expensive — make the business case to obtain those tools.

Bonfire is one of the tools that your team has implemented. What has it brought to your procurement process?

There’s consistency of message. There is assurance that the platform we are using is consistent to our end users, and there is more communication between our evaluators and our buyers. That’s one of the best things — there is more communication about the specifics of each project.

As a manager, I can go in to review anyone’s work at any time. It allows me to let them know that I am watching for consistency and watching to ensure our policies are applied across all of our projects. It’s an invaluable tool from a management perspective.

There’s also more teamwork among buyers. Every week, there’s a standing meeting and everyone goes through Bonfire to look at the projects in various stages — where we are at, who we are waiting on, what’s next?

When I first got here, it seemed as though there was a very hierarchical structure — if you had a question, you went to the purchasing manager. Now, they’re asking each other, ‘hey, how did you handle that?’ and ‘how did you set this one up?’ In the end, we need to be the experts on how to get the procurement completed and advising the departments on the best way to do that. The more we learn from each other, the better we can serve those departments in getting their needs accomplished.

Do you have any advice to offer about a career in procurement?

Oftentimes, the longer you work in government, you tend to get jaded — either by the process, or people’s attitudes. Especially in today’s environment, there are people who look at government and their functions as unnecessary or excessive. It is an uphill battle always to defend your profession.

What I have kept in the back of my mind, in my experiences throughout 18 years of service, is that the vast majority of people that are in public service are good people who are trying to do the right thing. We may argue about the way in which we get things done. But in general, no matter what side of the aisle you may be on, everybody is trying to do the right thing.

We can’t look at our functions through the lens of a critic, thinking that people have the worst intentions. We have to put policies in place to prevent those things, but not at the expense of those that are trying to do the right thing. I keep that in mind every day of my work.

Read more stories from real procurement teams using Bonfire.