Streamlining Vendor Certification: Hartford's Path to Efficiency

Overview

The City of Hartford has lofty goals. Its Contract Compliance Unit has the responsibility to monitor the efforts of contractors to comply with the Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity contractual requirements. The intent is to enhance the inclusion of minorities and woman contractors and/or tradesworkers on City of Hartford projects. Contractors are required to set aside 15% of total construction work for Minority Business and 15% of the total project work hours, by trade, shall be worked by minority and female trades-workers. In addition, under the Hartford Resident Participation requirements, 30% of the total project work hours shall be worked by Hartford residents.

Successful Partnership

After an unsuccessful attempt with another vendor, the city brought on PlanetBids to assist in their certification and automation efforts for vendor management. Vendors can apply for certification, upload supporting documentation, and receive automated emails and updates. A determination is made within 30 days, with an approval letter and certificate generated from the system.

Everything that was done manually in the past is now on the system...saving time, paper and increasing the City’s availability to its vendor community. With the changeover from one system to the new one, PlanetBids offered support through additional training for new vendors to smooth the transition. The results speak for themselves—the City of Hartford has exceeded its goals, thanks in part to having a robust vendor management program.

Why eProcurement?

The better question is, why not eProcurement? Across the nation, local government procurement teams often struggle with a lack of resources and an overwhelming workload with new incoming compliance issues. Whether it is a manual, paper intensive process or an ERP system that is focused more on financials than purchasing, procurement teams do their best. In recent years, module based systems are now available that are flexible, integrate with most financial systems and more affordab le than ever. If you are still struggling with parts of your process expiring contracts, lack of available vendors, multiple bid deadlines and timely insurance updates, then it might be a good time to schedule a free demo to see what is available to you an d your team.

Results Using the PB System™

Advantages of e-Procurement

• Quicker processing times - let the system do the work with automated bid tabulations
• Prequalification of vendors for quicker bid times
• Up to date vendor database and profile maintenance
• A larger pool of vendors and increased competition
• Seamless audit trail for transparency and ad hoc reporting
• No printing/copying/mailing costs
• Data sharing across the organization and with other procurement teams to leverage purchasing power
• Pre-acceptance of terms and conditions

Play Ball!

Known as Dunkin’ Donuts Park, the City of Hartford is in the middle of construction for a new baseball park with at least 18 luxury suites; a minimum of 6,000 fixed seats, two party decks; two picnic areas/patios; state-of-the-art fan interactive areas; and modern amenities. For the Grand Opening game, the Rock Cats, the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, plan to begin playing at the new stadium in April 2016. As a result, the Procurement team has been tasked with expanding their outreach to include as many firms as possible in the process to participate in this world-class, high-profile project. The PlanetBids system helps with these goals and important project for the city.

Chosen PB System™ Solutions

• Vendor Management is the core of the PB System™ suite of modules. It offers a configurable and intuitive registration process to ensure that vendor registrations are complete and unique, avoiding duplicate records. 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), 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 professionals 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.
• Business Certification / Prequalification Management allows an organization to manage their certification programs such as Small Business Enterprise, Minority, or Diversity as well as Contractor Prequalification(s). Agencies can manage, maintain, and retrieve up-to-date information on vendor certifications and prequalifications. Registered vendors have access to viewing certified/prequalified vendors for potential subcontracting opportunities.