Avoiding “Pinch-Points” with eProcurement

All agencies have a manual for procurement that outlines policies and procedures. But then there’s the reality of how the process works as procurement offices juggle multiple requests and handle emergencies while trying to meet deadlines! Within that daily work life, there can be “pinch points” that cause delays, miscommunications or frustration among your team, customer departments, and the supplier community.

A “pinch point” is a problem or issue that doesn’t necessarily stop the process or prevent getting the job done, but it’s an aggravating circumstance that can slow down the process. Like tracking minority, women, disabled veteran-owned vendors, or insurance renewals manually or using a spreadsheet system. This can be cumbersome and open to human error or lapses in coverage if not strictly overseen. Another example is handling the Question and Answer period of a bid process through email exchanges. Especially for a bid that receives a lot of interest, those individual emails can be difficult to track to ensure that every question is answered, and all interested suppliers receive the same responses at the same time.

eProcurement can help agencies avoid pinch points. Here’s how:

Increase Supplier Participation and Diversity & Inclusion

It’s been shown by those who have already moved to automation, that their vendor pool increases significantly with an online presence.

For the City of Corona, once an eProcurement system was implemented, there was increased participation by the vendor community. In particular, the City saw the numbers rise for local vendors who previously thought they couldn’t compete for government contracts. The online system made it easy to register and quickly obtain information on upcoming opportunities, thus opening the door for many small businesses.

“Our City Council strives to ensure the city broadens its outreach efforts when advertising Quick Quotes, Bids or RFPs to be as competitive and inclusive as possible,” says Andy Ortiz, Purchasing Specialist for the City of Corona. “The PB System™ Project Summary tool is used by our procurement team to communicate how many vendors are notified, how many of those downloaded the RFP, and the ultimate number of proposals received. Our Council values this tool as they want to reach out to as many vendors/contractors as the city can.”

In addition, with greater outreach and tracking, an online procurement system increases the availability and potential for more minority, women-owned and disadvantaged businesses to be aware of bid opportunities.

“It’s important to encourage small business and Disabled Veteran Owned Business participation while tracking and reporting,” says Carmen Bermudez-Bracy, Certification Officer for The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. MWD implemented PlanetBids’ PB System™ to augment their supplier pool with the Small and Disadvantaged Business program.

PlanetBids’ Business Certification and Prequalification module allows any organization to manage its certification programs such as Small Business Enterprise, Minority, or Diversity as well as Contractor Prequalification, as required by the State of California. An important feature is the Contractor Prequalification program connects directly with the California State Licensing Board and the State Dept of Industrialization’s registration system for real-time verification. Since contractors cannot apply for District projects unless they are already prequalified by the state, it is imperative the system performs these checks. Verifications with 3^rd party sites can be configured for most sites.

Managing a Bid

Moving bid processes online can shorten timelines and provide better turnaround times in a very long government process. After the City of Anaheim’s Purchasing team moved their bid processes online, they realized a faster turnaround on bid times. The ability to track all activity on a bid was also enhanced by having all the processes online. From the time a bid is initially posted, vendors are electronically tracked when they download documents, acknowledge addenda, submit questions, and propose bids by the deadline. Every action is documented. In the event of a protest or concern, the purchasing team has a transparent record of the entire online process to review and assist in making any decisions. This process also helps them minimize a “no-bid” scenario, as they can investigate further if no vendors are participating in a bid process.

In procurement, pushing paper is a literal term. A former purchasing officer at San Jose State University recalls how reams of paper bids were loaded onto carts and transported across campus for evaluations.  Moving the evaluation process online streamlined the process and helped save trees!

From advertising to outreach to final evaluation and award, having an online procurement system conduct automatic real-time checks on certifications, submission of insurance and automatic communication for reference checks is a huge time-saver.

Maintain the Integrity of the Process

During any procurement process, things can come up. Having a system that tracks all activities helps maintain integrity of the process. When a supplier registers, downloads a bid or any addendums and submits their final proposal, the system timestamps each action. For those proposals that require data entry or math computations, the system can quickly review for incomplete fields or math errors. If any questions arise, or a protest is received, this reporting helps immensely in the review process.

PlanetBids offers a complete menu of modules that automates every aspect of procurement and helps remove those “pinch points”:

• Bid Management
• Vendor Management
• Business Certification
• Contract Management
• Insurance Management
• Evaluation Management
• Emergency Operations
• Bid Spec Library