Inclusivity and Efficiency Combined: Fort Myers' Procurement Advancement

Overview

The City of Fort Myers serves as a gateway to the southwest region and a major tourist destination in the State of Florida. Within the City, Procurement Services is the centralized authority responsible for the contracting and procurement of supplies, goods, equipment, contractual services, professional and consultant services, capital improvements, and construction.

The goal of Procurement Services is to support a Culture of Excellence by providing superior goods and services through effective, innovative, and strategic procurement and contract management.

Challenge

Until a few years ago, this mission was achieved through a paper-intensive, manual process. Mailing bids and documents was extremely time-consuming, requiring extensive record-keeping for accurate tracking. When proposals were received, multiple copies had to be created and delivered to evaluation team members, while award letters and contract documents needed to be mailed out, then returned by the successful vendor.

With the availability of eProcurement systems tailored to government agencies, City procurement team members realized there had to be a better way. Presentations were arranged with numerous companies to review each system’s capabilities.

While free or low-cost systems were available, their models for pricing passed expenses to vendors who registered and participated in City opportunities. The agency was particularly focused with tracking and expanding their outreach to minority and disadvantaged businesses; therefore, passing costs onto the supplier community was not a viable option. In addition, report generation was critical from answering simple questions, such as, “How many potential vendors are available for this particular opportunity?” to more comprehensive outreach and participation updates to management.

Results Using the PB System™ 

After an extensive evaluation process, PlanetBids was ultimately selected for its superior Bid Management System to handle all bids for commodities, services, and construction. Working with their IT department, the initial setup was executed quickly. For the vendor community, the move to an online bid system has been met with enthusiasm. Hosting virtual meetings and bid openings, as well as having all documents readily available online, has made both the City’s and contractors’ lives easier with necessary social distancing requirements.

Easy Transition

Transitioning to any new system can be met with resistance from customer departments.

For those who wanted to “do things the way we’ve always done it,” City of Fort Myers departments were given a choice to process their bids using the conventional manual process or use the new system. Procurement staff worked diligently to allow both options while the online process was in transition. As a result, the majority preferred to move their bids to the PB System™.

Further outreach to include diverse participation is now made possible through automation. Once a solicitation is published, it is also automatically posted to the State of Florida’s network of minority businesses. This has allowed outreach to be expanded at a statewide level, bringing in more diversity to the contracting pool.

Over the next fiscal year, the City plans to expand its use of the system by moving insurance certi-fications and contract management online as well.

“We were already on-line when the team began working exclusively from home, making the transition seamless. In fact, our team has received many compliments from across the organization within the theme that we never missed a beat!”

Denise K. Finn Procurement Manager Procurement Services

Chosen PB System™ Solutions

• Vendor Management is the core of the PB System™ modular suite. It offers a configurable registration process to ensure vendor registrations are complete and unique. Instantly gain access to vendor records, run advanced searches on multiple sets of vendor data, perform real-time verification of provided information (i.e., certifications and licenses) against third party databases, generate comprehensive reports with visual charts, and broadcast messages to selected vendors.
• Bid Management is the most complete web-based system on the market today. Procurement agents can quickly manage the process of issuing, monitoring, conducting evaluations, and awarding formal and informal bids. More importantly, the PB System™ can handle construction and public works projects, a feature unique to the eProcurement industry. Vendors can interactively search, view, and respond to bid opportunities securely over the Internet.
• Contract Management enables an agency to maintain and retrieve up-to-date relevant information regarding contracts, greatly reducing the need to search through endless documents. Paired with Compliance, agencies can track the diversity participation compared to their contract goals monthly. The vendor enters the data monthly online and their subcontractor validates the accuracy giving agency’s confidence the diversity participation numbers are accurate.
• Insurance Certificate Management enables risk, procurement, public works, and contract administrators to automate, maintain, and retrieve up-to-date relevant information regarding vendor or contractor insurance certificates. Paired with My Insurance, agencies and vendors can conduct all insurance related tasks virtually within the PB System™.