Tag: Procurement Best Practices

2020 was a year of challenges tackled and lessons learned for public sector agencies. While no one could have predicted the pandemic or the events that unfolded as a result, procurement teams had no choice but to keep calm and source on.

At Bonfire, we celebrate the innovative thinking and quick action of procurement professionals in continuing to deliver critical public services through COVID-19. In order to learn as much as possible from your efforts in facing the demands of the pandemic and your outlook for 2021, we distributed a survey to public procurement professionals across the US.

The results, collected over December 2020 and January 2021, uncover key trends related to how procurement teams responded to the pandemic, how COVID-19 affected operations, and how these impacts have shaped procurement priorities and strategies for 2021.

Read on for an overview of key survey insights that you can use to establish benchmarks and inform your procurement strategy going forward.

Addressing 2020’s biggest challenges required digital solutions

Looking back to the early days of the pandemic when public procurement departments scrambled to source in-demand items – hand sanitizer, face masks, IT equipment, remote work software – it’s not surprising that supply chain shortages rank at the top of 2020’s biggest procurement challenges, affecting 65% of respondents. Given the current struggles of the vaccine roll-out, with agencies looking for emergency supplies, it’s clear those challenges have only continued.

Beyond sourcing frustrations, our survey results show that procurement teams were facing other key points of strain in the procurement process, including quickly finding new vendors in new categories, facilitating contactless bid submissions and public bid openings, and responding to new and/or urgent project requests.

For many teams reliant on paper-based processes, these challenges necessitated some degree of rapid digital transformation. Survey respondents reported three very different approaches to digitization during the pandemic, from no changes to temporary fixes to permanent shifts to digital operations.

Remote work continues to be a reality in 2021

A central goal of our survey was to explore the longer-term impacts of changes driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. By understanding how agencies reevaluated operations, procurement teams can strategize about what needs to change permanently to meet new stakeholder expectations.

When it comes to one of the biggest workplace shifts of 2020 – telecommuting – our results show that nearly half of respondents expect to go back to the office full-time in 2021. On the other hand, 30% will work from home more than 50% of the time. 

While the majority of procurement professionals expect a return to the office, many agencies will have to explore ways to accommodate a hybrid work environment in which nearly a third of employees perform at least half their work from home. On top of that, procurement teams will have to account for the new dynamics of evaluators and vendors, who may expect the option of a remote, digital experience.

Cooperative contracts are the most popular cost-cutting strategy

The consequences of COVID-19-driven financial pressures on public sector organizations cannot be underestimated. Slashed budgets and downsizing across public agencies in the US have resulted in a reevaluation and reprioritization of projects and spending. 

Our survey explores this topic by measuring procurement teams’ key priorities and strategies for driving savings in the coming year. With the need to explore innovative cost-cutting opportunities in 2021, 54% of survey respondents say they plan to pursue cooperative contracts.

This strategy allows public procurement teams to leverage the benefits of partnership and gain access to vendors that are already vetted by the contracting agent. They can avoid running a solicitation and provide a faster solution – accommodating the shortened time frame that more stakeholders have come to expect, according to our survey results.

Explore more insights

Many of the changes spurred by the pandemic will have wide-reaching, long-term consequences for public procurement. And, after a whirlwind pandemic year of new processes, technologies, and ways of working, many teams are only just beginning to get their bearings.

In order to build a strategy for the coming years that’s cost-effective, agile, and future-proof, public procurement teams will need to integrate the lessons of the past year and continue building on newly realized strengths and efficiencies. 

Get more insights to inform your strategy by downloading the full survey report.

COVID-19 wasn’t the only major event shaping the future of government over the past year. During social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate, citizens have been demanding change from their governments.

As social, environmental, and economic movements continue to gain momentum, promoting social good is a growing priority for public agencies. Procurement teams have an opportunity to level the playing field for diverse suppliers and communities through social procurement.

In the United States, new policies emerging from the Biden administration will make those efforts more important than ever, with greater emphasis placed on awarding RFPs to disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs).

With that in mind, let’s dive into the topic of social procurement – what it means for your organization and how it can drive meaningful change in your community.

Procurement for social good

As every public procurement professional knows, governments have a great deal of purchasing power. The U.S. federal government alone spends over $500 billion per year procuring goods and services, while the Canadian feds spend $18-20 billion annually. When you look at total spending across all levels of government in the United States, the number exceeds $7 trillion.

Historically, procurement’s main goal has been to stretch public dollars as far as possible by sourcing suppliers at the lowest possible prices, while achieving high quality and low risk. The movement toward social procurement, however, focuses on maximizing social, environmental, cultural, and economic value. By using government purchasing power to support local minority-owned businesses, agencies can achieve multiple valuable outcomes for communities.

As Buy Social Canada explains in their Guide to Social Procurement, “Every purchase has an economic, environmental, and social impact, whether intended or not. Social procurement is about capturing those impacts and seeking to make intentional positive contributions to both the local economy and the overall vibrancy of the community.”

By using public dollars to drive overarching goals like social equity and environmental sustainability, the positive impact on communities can be significant.

Social responsibility during the pandemic and beyond

At the same time that social justice movements have pushed governments to prioritize racial and social equity, the pandemic has increased awareness of public procurement’s important role.

For departments that, up until COVID-19, functioned mostly behind the scenes, this visibility created opportunities to rethink traditional purchasing decisions, relationships, and processes. In particular, procurement teams are making the shift toward more equitable and inclusive spending to address the social and economic disparities the pandemic has exacerbated.

Through social procurement, agencies can actively enable greater and more diverse participation in public contracts, for example, by prioritizing minority- and women-owned local and small businesses. 

As director of procurement Joel Neaveill explains, supply chain shortages during the pandemic actually created more opportunities for his organization, the Louisville Metro Government, to diversify their supplier base and bring on new local businesses.

“Our local economy, like everyone’s local economy, is just hurting so much,” Neaveill says. “Through this emergency, we’re turning to [local businesses] to help supply part of the response to the emergency… We also have a list of minority- and women-owned businesses that, as part of the incident management team, we look at through an equity lens—how are we equitably responding to this so we don’t have disparate outcomes?”

Shifting policy toward equity

Beyond the pandemic, public procurement policy has significant power to influence public services, create jobs, and drive healthy competition in the market. Recognizing this, the Biden administration in the United States has outlined intentions to “support small businesses and tackle inequities in the federal contracting system,” including tripling federal contracting goals for small, disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs) by 2025.

The proposed policy directives would increase participation of small DBEs in business development programs and subcontracting opportunities, and minimize contract bundling that disadvantages minority-owned businesses in the bidding process.

Similar shifts toward social procurement are happening in governments around the world. Driving the evolution is a growing awareness that effective and equitable procurement systems can increase citizens’ faith in government, stimulate economic growth, and build more supportive and inclusive communities.

Are you ready for the future of public procurement? Download our eBook for more insights – The Rise of Procurement’s Next Normal.

If COVID-19 has proven anything about public procurement teams, it’s their impressive ability to, in the words of Project Runway host Tim Gunn, “make it work.”

 
Of course, the high-stakes pressure of responding to a global health crisis doesn’t quite compare to the fabricated TV drama of a runway-design reality show – but the “make it work” mantra still rings true.

Making it work is how public agencies adapted on the fly when the pandemic turned business upside-down overnight. It’s how paper-based procurement teams ran more projects than ever, even as processes shifted fully online. And it’s how they delivered essential goods and services despite unforeseeable disruption across global supply chains.

But “making it work” was never meant to be anything more than a temporary fix – an agile response to a global emergency. It becomes incredibly risky when that mentality – what we call “patchwork procurement” – becomes your status quo. Let’s explore why.

How the pandemic drove patchwork procurement

Like the Project Runway designers who weave scraps of fabric into gowns worthy of the red carpet, procurement teams at the start of COVID-19 had to cobble together whatever tools and resources were available at the time to create a workable procurement process.

We refer to that approach as “patchwork procurement.” Before the pandemic, teams using a patchwork system may have been relying on manual processes supported by in-person meetings, disparate tools, and one-on-one discussions. 

In quickly adapting to remote work, patchwork agencies didn’t have a strong digital foundation to build on. Instead, they introduced a medley of digital tools and processes, from accepting emailed vendor submissions to evaluating proposals using Excel spreadsheets. 

For the most part, these changes simply replicated or even exacerbated the inefficiencies of paper-based systems.

The risks of patchwork procurement

If you belong to the 43% of agencies that made temporary patchwork changes during COVID-19, it’s time to reevaluate your tools and processes. Here are three major reasons why.

Audit trail gaps

Despite the pandemic, public procurement is still held to the same rigorous compliance standards as always. Unfortunately, the more systems you use, the more opportunities there are for audit trail gaps. And all it takes to start a lawsuit is for one vendor to challenge your process.

If you’ve been using email to receive submissions, it’s especially important that you reconsider your strategy. Not only can technical issues, such as junk mail filters, firewalls, or slow internet connections disqualify vendors unfairly, it’s also impossible to prove when emails were opened, leaving you with an incomplete audit trail. 

Inefficiency and administrative overhead

Working across disparate systems is unavoidably difficult to track, but it’s also inefficient. Patchwork processes and tools introduce overly complex workflows that only create more headaches. 

In the early days of the pandemic, getting staff, stakeholders, and evaluators up to speed on multiple systems and processes created a backlog of work and delayed progress in awarding urgent bids. On top of the unmanageable amount of training required for non-procurement users, teams face other barriers to productivity caused by siloed systems, including time wasted on searching for misplaced files, answering questions, correcting confusion, fixing human errors, and duplicating effort.

Lack of transparency and collaboration

With public sector budgets being slashed and procurement teams being called on to reprioritize projects and save costs, it’s vitally important that all stakeholders and internal clients have visibility into the procurement pipeline and timelines.

Unfortunately, this is something patchwork procurement typically can’t deliver. Without a centralized, accessible hub for tracking projects, it’s more difficult to make strategic business decisions, reprioritize projects, and collaborate with senior leaders and managers.

On the other hand, teams that have transparency into their pipeline will be fully equipped to navigate the razor-thin margins of the next few years and make smart, collaborative decisions.

What now?

For many months, your procurement team has been hustling to get ahead of the disruption caused by the pandemic. So, rethinking your processes and tools—again—is probably the last thing on your mind. The truth is, it’s the only way you can prepare for the inevitable challenges that lie ahead.

The good news? You’ve already taken steps toward digital transformation. To get support on the rest of your journey, check out our new resource, The Rise of Procurement’s Next Normal, designed to help you understand and navigate the new landscape of digital procurement.

Procurement teams play a valuable role in helping public sector agencies thrive with limited resources. If you follow our blog, you know we’re pretty big fans of everything you do to make citizens’ lives better and communities stronger.

In the near future, procurement’s capacity for agility and strategic thinking will be put to the test even more, as agencies across North America face mounting economic fallout from COVID-19.

To survive and thrive, organizations will increasingly turn to procurement to guide cost-cutting efforts and make smart decisions that support the bottom line.

Is your team ready to step up and address the unique financial challenges of the coming months and years? Let’s look at how you can manage costs, optimize your spending, and strategically reevaluate budgets in 2021 and beyond.

Ensure projects support new priorities

One of the most important activities procurement teams are undertaking in 2021 is reevaluating budgets to ensure spending aligns with new priorities driven by the pandemic and (eventually) post-pandemic recovery.

For some agencies, that means deprioritizing capital projects and focusing on digital initiatives that help them work efficiently and deliver services from anywhere. The exact priorities will differ from one agency to the next, but the role of procurement is clear. Your team is best positioned to apply a bird’s-eye-view as budgets feel the strain of COVID-19.

Put current contracts under the microscope

Reevaluating budgets inevitably means scrutinizing current contracts to identify which ones should be cancelled or renegotiated. This includes weighing the potential financial impacts of altering project timelines or switching vendors.

Consider taking a deep dive into existing contracts to see if there’s scope for revisiting payment terms, changing purchasing frequency, leveraging volume discounts, or bringing prices in line with market competitors.

If you have access to up-to-date procurement data, you can review past purchases and supplier performance to identify opportunities to save money and renegotiate contracts.

Build partnerships that make you stronger

Although it may seem counterintuitive, cutting costs in the post-pandemic economy could require strategic investments in pricier vendors and new digital platforms that streamline processes. (More on that in the next section.)

While cost is still one of the most significant factors in purchasing decisions, your team will also need to weigh criteria like supply chain agility and organizational resilience more heavily when choosing suppliers and prioritizing projects. 

Having strong, high-quality relationships with reliable, established (and, yes, sometimes more expensive) vendors will be crucial to preventing unexpected costs down the road.

Go digital to boost efficiency

In 2021, procurement leaders are also looking to save money in the long run through upfront investments in digital solutions that improve relationships and communication with vendors, reduce administrative burden, increase compliance, and streamline workflows.

When it comes to managing costs, communication is especially important. Having strong relationships with suppliers helps procurement teams collaborate to keep costs down and make partnerships more sustainable. Centralized information-sharing and communication in real time will be crucial to navigating disruption now and into the future. 

Keep leaders in the loop

A centralized procurement approach can also drive significant savings for public agencies by eliminating overlapping supply requests across business groups and ensuring your procurement pipeline aligns with key priorities.

A unified process gives you greater visibility into purchasing across the organization, helping you work more collaboratively with senior managers to understand where and when departments are planning to spend their budget. In turn, leaders can forecast spend and reprioritize as necessary to make it through financially demanding periods.

Get creative to maximize budget

Your procurement team has lots of tools under its belt – not least of which is creative thinking. Exploring innovative, non-traditional approaches can help you unlock significant cost savings. 

Consider alternative supplier structures and purchasing strategies, including co-ops, best and final offers (BAFOs), invitations to negotiate (ITNs), and split award notices, which can drive competition and give you access to better pricing.

Embrace procurement’s next normal

As we’ve discussed, cutting costs in public procurement isn’t just about finding the best value. It’s also about mitigating risk to avoid negative fallout and unplanned expenses. Procurement teams are delivering that strategic leadership to help agencies manage today’s economic challenges through better sourcing, purchasing, and negotiation.

Looking for more guidance on how procurement teams can guide agencies through a post-pandemic world? Download our eBook, The Rise of Procurement’s Next Normal.

When COVID-19 forced public procurement teams across North America to go virtual, it set off a chain reaction of quick, knee-jerk technology investments.

Public sector institutions had to attend to urgent health and safety needs. Employees were sent to work from home—some for the first time ever. Procurement teams faced the challenge of rapidly sourcing suppliers amidst global supply chain disruptions. And traditionally in-person activities, like proposal submissions, public bid openings, and evaluations were no longer possible.

Particularly for agencies that hadn’t started (or finished) making the switch to digital platforms and processes, it became necessary to adopt or scale-up digital tools, virtually overnight.

Now, as we enter the second year of COVID-19 with the promise of mass vaccination in sight, many procurement teams find themselves asking: How well are our pandemic-driven digital solutions actually working?

Here’s why your team should be asking the same question, and how you can begin to reevaluate and future-proof your digital transformation approach.

Reconsidering ad-hoc solutions

If your team had to adopt new tools and processes in a short timeframe to deal with the COVID-19 emergency response, there wasn’t much time to strategize about the best approach for digitizing legacy systems and paper-based processes. 

Your goal was to address urgent needs as efficiently as possible using ad-hoc solutions to run essential processes. You may have initiated software trials or pilots, and now it’s time to ask: Do these tools have a place within our tech stack and processes?

For the most part, band-aid fixes won’t be the ideal solution for your agency, nor will they be sustainable over the long term. As McKinsey observes, many procurement departments “are trapped in pilot purgatory, making small investments in select use cases that never scale up to achieve real business impact.” That’s because, rather than driving better results, multiple, disconnected systems tend to introduce these and other problems:

• Higher costs
• Increased human error
• Workflow inefficiencies
• Data silos
• Misplaced files
• Audit trail gaps

If you don’t take the steps to evaluate your current technology and introduce a unified solution, there’s a risk that strung-together tools and processes – and their associated inefficiencies – could become permanent.

Meeting compliance standards

Are there any compliance shortfalls in our digital tools and processes? It’s a critical question public procurement teams need to consider at all times – but especially when evaluating new (and rapidly) adopted solutions.

Despite the emergency measures COVID-19 introduced, public procurement continues to be bound by pre-pandemic compliance standards. Without detailed audit trails to justify evaluation conclusions, you could be forced to reconsider proposals and decisions – a situation that came up multiple times in 2020 by order of the US Government Accountability Office.

When measuring new digital solutions against compliance capabilities, your procurement team should ensure they provide purpose-built tools that ensure state and federal law compliance.

With the right digital platform, you can minimize legal risk and ensure you meet all required standards, without relying on the knowledge and expertise of transitory subject matter experts.

Driving post-pandemic digital strategy

The ultimate question to answer when evaluating your digital tools is: Will they support our post-pandemic digital transformation? 

Although meeting the challenge of COVID-19 has depended on agile decision-making and a make-do approach, going forward, your technology investments will need to support your long-term growth and innovation.

In order to evaluate sustainability over the long haul, it’s worth considering how well your technology helps you do the following:

• Connect, digitize and manage your operations end to end, from intake to contract management
• Centralize your project pipeline, so everything is easily accessible in one place
• Make processes intuitive and easy to use for all internal clients
• Accelerate, rather than impede, project lifecycles
• Support decision-making with an airtight audit trail
• Provide full project transparency and robust reporting

By securing future-proof software solutions that meet the needs we’ve discussed, your procurement team can satisfy your constituents and stakeholders as you chart a path to digital transformation based on efficiency, compliance, and vendor engagement.

Most importantly, a strong digital strategy will ensure your team is equipped to play a central role in driving economic and societal recovery beyond the pandemic.

Procurement teams have a lot to consider when navigating digital transformation during and after COVID-19. Our latest eBook is here to help. Download The Rise of Procurement’s Next Normal today.

COVID-19 has undoubtedly exposed just how critical (and difficult) the role of public procurement is. Vaccine sourcing and distribution, vendor diversification initiatives, and supply chain shortages have thrust municipal procurement teams in the spotlight as you navigate these unchartered waters.

As you innovate and adapt to respond to the crisis now and prepare for a post-pandemic future, it’s more important than ever for public procurement professionals like yourself to connect with your peers to learn from their experience. That’s why, here at Bonfire, we hosted our first 2021 virtual user meet-up for municipalities from February 23 to 26. These sessions, spread over the span of four days, brought together procurement professionals from over 40 cities and counties from across North America. Here’s an insider look into what attendees learned. 

Day 1: Procurement in 2021 panel

We kicked off the meetup week with Bonfire’s Chief Client & Product Officer, Omar Salaymeh, speaking to the growth of our municipal client base and the trends we’ve seen across municipalities. We introduced the virtual audience to the over 40 organizations that had registered for sessions—setting the tone for a week full of collaboration and networking across regions.

The real show stopper of the day was our Procurement in 2021 panel. Ron Shoram, Business Analyst at Fairfax County, dove into his recommendations for supporting and aligning his county’s 70+ procurement stakeholders. Crystal Vandermeulen, Procurement Analyst at the City of Kamloops, grabbed everyone’s attention by sharing how her team rolled out a vendor performance program. Shawn Garris, Procurement Analyst at the City of New Haven, shared his recommendations for designing and maintaining a vendor diversity initiative. 

Day 2: Peer-led toolkit session

Marla Bossons from the District of North Cowichan kept a captive audience as she dove into her best practices using Bonfire’s intake, projects, and lifecycle modules. She kicked off her session sharing that after 20 years in the finance department, she expanded the scope of her role into procurement 6 years ago and formalized their procurement rollout. Marla highlighted how she uses Bonfire to:

• Achieve a consistent, defensible, and transparent process throughout the lifecycle of a project
• Get notifications and reminders so nothing slips through the cracks when it comes to renewals, insurance reminders, rate changes, evaluations, and more
• Easily access all procurement information in one central location
• Provide stakeholders with a quick glance at the status of projects

Marla received lots of questions throughout her session and left attendees with plenty of tips and tricks. 

Day 3: Meet the Bonfire product team

Day 3 was all about giving our clients insight into what’s to come in the Bonfire platform. We gave a sneak peek into our upcoming Approvals feature, which is designed to consolidate approvals at every stage of the procurement process in one central place. 

At Bonfire, our product roadmap has always been inspired by our rockstar clients, so we always appreciate an opportunity to get feedback and ideas on how the platform can better serve them. We divided clients into smaller breakout rooms to discuss what they love about being a part of the Bonfire community, and how we can integrate those benefits in the platform. There was a collective feeling that procurement isn’t meant to be done in a silo, and there were lots of ideas on ways clients could learn from their Bonfire peers to improve and streamline their process through the platform.

To end the day, we discussed the challenges that come with tracking vendor diversity, especially given some recent policy changes that have made it even more critical. Teams discussed how they manage these challenges today, and how Bonfire as a partner could improve this very critical step of the process. 

Day 4: Municipality roundtable

This day was entirely dedicated to focused discussions centered on topics most pressing for municipalities in 2021. Topics of discussion that emerged in these breakout rooms included:

• How Bonfire was able to connect procurement with suppliers amidst nationwide PPE shortages
• Tracking supplier diversity and ways Bonfire can assist with tracking and reporting
• Supplying services and products necessary to ramp up vaccine rollout efforts 
• Using Bonfire alongside an ERP
• How COVID increased the need for an efficient and effective process, exposing ways old processes and systems weren’t supporting public procurement in the way they needed
• Transitioning vendors to an online submission platform

Overall, it was a fantastic week full of shared client insight, networking, and a look into municipal procurement in 2021. For a look into upcoming virtual user meet-ups, visit our website!

With vaccines now rolling-out across all states and provinces, the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel is becoming brighter. But, for procurement teams, the pressure that started in March 2020 continues to mount as procurement plays a key role in setting-up vaccine clinics and supplying their agencies with the goods they need to fully and safely open.

As public agencies are setting their sights on our next normal, supply chains are showing signs of recovering, new suppliers are appearing, and more products are available through existing suppliers. All of this provides new opportunities for public agencies to grow their vendor pool. One of the best ways to find these new suppliers is by using commodity codes, such as the UNSPSC commodity codes and the NIGP commodity codes in public solicitations.

Using commodity codes is an effective way to make sure that qualified suppliers are aware of opportunities at your agency. For example, commodity codes can be used in Bonfire to invite all suppliers of that commodity to bid when the opportunity is published.

To help procurement teams everywhere, Bonfire has created a cheat sheet of UNSPSC commodity codes and NIGP commodity codes for commonly required emergency supplies. Here’s a sneak peek:

UNSPSC Commodity Codes

NIGP Commodity Codes

The full cheat sheet includes thermometers; sterilization, disinfectant, and antiseptic agents; PPE; and tents and partitions. Download it for free and save it as a desktop reference.

Established by the CARES Act, the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) is here to help State and some local governments respond to COVID-19. The Fund covers some more obvious expenses—like establishing temporary public medical facilities or disinfection of public areas—but it also covers those indirect costs related to COVID-19, like expenses to improve telework capabilities for public employees working from home.

We’ve previously talked about how governments can use their CARES Act funding to deliver services to communities faster than ever before with procurement software. So now what? What are the eligibility requirements for CRF dollars and how can you ensure that you’re being compliant as you’re investigating software options? We’ve got you covered. Three requirements for CRF eligibility were highlighted in recent guidance from the Department of the Treasury. In this blog, we’ve outlined how to identify procurement software that aligns with all three requirements so that you can spend your CRF dollars worry-free.

Are your expenditures necessary to address COVID-19?

The first requirement states that CRF may only be used to cover costs that “are necessary to expenditures incurred due to the public health emergency, with respect to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).” In their list of nonexclusive examples of eligible expenditures, the Department of the Treasury mentions expenses for public safety measures (such as maintaining social distancing) as well as expenses to improve telework capabilities for public employees.

First of all, if vendors were previously coming into the office to drop off proposals, or were mailing them in, procurement software can help maintain social distancing and limit face-to-face contact by providing vendors with an easy and convenient online submission process. Unlike email vendor submissions, which can open your agency up to significant legal risk, keep an eye out for procurement software that is built for the rigor and rules of North American public sector procurement, so you can remain rest assured that you’re maintaining compliance.

And if your team is working remotely, you can award contracts seamlessly with online bid and RFP evaluation. You can also ensure project continuity while your team is working from home with built-in communication and collaboration tools.

Were the covered costs not accounted for in your budget?

Additionally, CRF may only be used to cover costs that “were not accounted for in the budget most recently approved as of March 27, 2020 (the date of enactment of the CARES Act) for the State or government.”

This means that, even if you didn’t budget for procurement software this fiscal year, the CARES Act provides a unique opportunity to digitally transform your procurement process to make it more efficient, more collaborative, and more adaptive to emergency situations.

Are the costs incurred before December 30?

Lastly, the CARES Act provides that payments from CRF may only be used to cover costs that “were incurred during the period that begins on March 1, 2020, and ends on December 30, 2020.”

Guidance from the Department of the Treasury clarified that for a cost to be considered to have been incurred, performance or delivery must occur during the covered period but payment of funds need not be made during that time. So as long as you have implemented the software before December 30, the cost is considered “incurred,” even if you haven’t made a payment.

Since the December 30 deadline is fast-approaching, signing on with a software vendor that enables quick and organized implementation is critical. Although some solutions require 6-12 month implementations, eProcurement providers like Bonfire can provide successful implementations in as little as two weeks. Just make sure that, before signing the dotted line, you and your vendor are aligned on implementation outcomes to ensure you’re up and running with the new software before December 30.

Want more tips on how to find COVID-related funding, apply it to your missions, and multiply that funding to maximize outcomes? Download this guide full of practical insights on how to use your CARES funding as a catalyst for digital transformation that will help you thrive during the pandemic and propel you into the future.

Grants management and procurement work hand-in-hand, especially in times of disruption, like the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, compliance is the cornerstone of grants management, and procurement can ensure that rules are followed from pre-award to closeout. And coordinating acquiring and spending of funds using digital tools can make a big impact in your organization.

That’s why we recently teamed up with grants management leader eCivis in our latest webinar “3 ways to maximize your COVID-19 funding through digital transformation.” Our expert panelists discussed the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF), which helps to cover expenses related to COVID-19, like medical and public health goods and services. For many, acquiring and spending CRF compliantly and with maximum impact, all before the December 30 deadline, can be daunting—but it doesn’t have to be. Our hosts discussed 3 steps to maximizing CRF dollars, and they were even joined by Nolan Sosa from the City of San Angelo to give an inside peek at how his agency used CRF to buy procurement software to maintain social distancing and remote work collaboration. Here are some highlights from that conversation.

Step 1: Finding the funding

It’s no secret that tracking down the right grant opportunities is time-consuming and overwhelming. Simply reading the fine print in a notice of opportunity can take hours. Digital tools can help standardize and track everything. Customizable search engines, for instance, consolidate the most important information so you can know if the opportunity is relevant before you read all the fine print.

In the webinar, Nolan shared his experience with finding COVID-19 funding and determining if he had a case to use it to digitize their procurement processes.

“What no one tells you about a pandemic is that infrastructure projects and health and public safety priorities do not stop when the world goes into lockdown,” said Nolan. The procurement process had to continue, but now with the added challenge of accepting and evaluating projects remotely in a way that complied with all applicable statutes and laws. Not to mention, vendors were frustrated because their bids were not arriving on time due to mail delays. 

“eProcurement was no longer a want for us; it became a need very quickly,” said Nolan.

With very little budget to work with, Nolan began looking into grant options like CRF. He was able to build a business case predicated on two factors:

1. Social distancing – Online bid submission could eliminate the need for in-person proposal submissions, courier deliveries, and physical bid openings.

2. Remote workforce – With Nolan’s team working from home, eProcurement could help with collaboration, communication, and complete coverage of the process online.

With his business case built, Nolan was able to get buy-in and approval from the City Attorney, CFO, and City Manager.

Step 2: Applying the funding to missions

Every public agency has a mission—and the way you choose to use your funding at this time can either work towards it or against it.

For instance, in an effort to reduce costs in the current economic climate, some agencies may choose to cut some of their software costs. But eliminating cloud-based systems can introduce redundancies and a lot of human error, ultimately affecting your mission’s impact long-term. 

By digitizing procurement, Nolan’s team was able to realize efficiencies that enabled his agency to meet constituents’ needs faster. For instance, they’ve been able to increase the level of service for internal clients with Bonfire’s intake module, streamline the drafting process with templates, and focus less on vendor document management and more on vendor engagement with a portal where suppliers can upload their own documents and proposals. 

Step 3: Multiplying funding to maximize outcomes

With so many agencies still facing budget cuts, staff reductions, and being forced to do more with less, being able to make your funding go further to maximize outcomes for your mission is more critical than ever. Digitizing your grants and procurement processes can help.

“When you take time away from paper shuffling and administrative duties, and allocate it towards long-term sustainable sourcing solutions, you’re serving your organization and you’re serving the public in a more effective manner. And if you’re able to do it through state and federal dollars, then that’s just an added bonus,” said Nolan.

To listen to the full conversation with our expert panelists on how to find and effectively spend COVID-19 funding, watch the full webinar for free. Although for some agencies, like public housing and transportation, the deadline has been extended, the deadline for states to spend CRF is still December 30—which is approaching fast. Book a demo with us to learn more about maximizing your CRF or other COVID-19 funding with procurement software. 

For procurement teams, a standardized and collaborative intake process often gets pushed to the back burner when you’re constantly reacting to the urgent and unforeseen needs of your internal clients. Your procurement intake process, however, has the potential to make or break any project.

Take the 95/5 rule, for instance. According to procurement lawyer Paul Emanuelli, 95% of procurement failures are caused by the negligence to properly address the five core elements of project planning:

• Scoping of requirements (What are we buying?)
• Pricing structures (What is the pricing format?)
• Evaluation of criteria (What is the evaluation plan?)
• Contract format (How do we assemble the final contract?)
• Tendering format (What is the tendering format?)

To secure better bid and RFP outcomes, procurement can add a lot of strategic value when brought into the beginning planning stages of a project. A standardized and collaborative request intake process is key. Digital tools have the power to simplify your procurement processes and connect your colleagues to your procurement systems so everyone is on the same page, driving outcomes that benefit your procurement team, your internal clients, and your leadership. Here’s how.

How intake empowers your procurement team

When requests and questions are coming in the form of forwarded email chains, it can feel like you’re trying to fix the car when it’s already driving down the road. 

An online procurement intake process can help you get requirements right the first time and set expectations when it comes to things like vendor requirements and timelines. Digital tools that are quick, easy, and get requestors back to their day jobs ensure that your process is actually adopted by your colleagues. 

Connecting your intake process directly to your eProcurement software can help eliminate manual data entry and give your team a real-time view into project pipeline, which makes it easier to organize and triage your team’s workload. When your team comes together to plan, it’s fast and efficient to review new and open requests, update details and assignments, and make sure you hit deadlines, all online.

When your procurement team is better aligned and seamlessly communicating, it translates to better collaboration with your internal clients, too. 

How intake empowers your colleagues

Implementing a user-friendly request intake process can help uncover real business need early so procurement can deliver great value at a competitive price—making everyone happy and building trust in procurement’s strategic contribution. 

By providing your internal clients with templates, best practices, and realistic expectations, you can help lighten the load for them. Bring industry bid and RFP data to your planning meetings so that you can assure your stakeholders that you’ve got this. You can help everyone better understand the category, how other agencies have done similar projects, and what to expect with this project when it comes to timelines, criteria weighting, vendor participation, and the types of information you need from vendors.

The result of this supercharged collaboration and alignment is a faster event cycle, which, at the end of the day, is what your internal clients have wanted all along.

How intake empowers your agency

When procurement is equipped with the information you need to make the most informed and cost-effective bid or RFP decisions, your agency can reallocate that saved time and money to more initiatives and programs that benefit your constituents.

As a procurement team, you can enable your agency to steward taxpayer dollars with more impact by giving senior managers visibility into your intake request dashboard, providing them with insight into where and when departments are planning on spending their budget. This insight helps your organization forecast the procurement pipeline and allocate resources to meet demand.

You can bring your agency’s budget to life even further by providing additional insight with national and local competitive event data. With industry data in hand, procurement can enable smarter budgeting for your agency, positioning procurement as a strategic advisor. 

Want to dive deeper into what an online, collaborative intake process looks like, and how it can add significant value for everyone at your organization? Download our intake eBook to learn more.