The beginning of Q3 marks more than just a shift in the calendar and the heat of summer for most public agencies. It’s the start of a new fiscal year and a pivotal moment for strategic recalibration. With fresh budgets in hand and ongoing projects already in motion, mid-year presents an often-overlooked opportunity to step back and evaluate the effectiveness of your procurement operations.
Why now? Because inefficiencies don’t fix themselves. They quietly build up across manual workflows, outdated systems, and fragmented vendor communications — creating delays, compliance risks, and missed savings opportunities. With a full budget at the ready, a mid-year evaluation allows you to make timely, targeted adjustments that deliver measurable impact long before the weather turns cooler.
Procurement teams often wait until year-end to assess performance, but by then, it’s typically too late to implement changes that influence the current fiscal cycle. Mid-year, on the other hand, is a sweet spot: you have data from the first half of the year, you’re actively engaging vendors and stakeholders, you have a fresh budget (if your fiscal year starts July 1) and you still have time to influence outcomes.
By pausing now to examine where bottlenecks exist and why, you give your team the chance to operate more efficiently for the rest of the year. That might mean reducing time from requisition to bid release, improving vendor response rates, or tightening up compliance documentation.
Start by examining the obvious: where are things slowing down? Many delays exist in routine approvals, particularly when they’re still routed manually or through disconnected tools. Every extra email, instant message, or manual handoff at an inbox on a desk adds friction. But those slowdowns can be eliminated with the right workflow structure.
Vendor communication is another critical area. If vendors are submitting incomplete bids, asking too many obvious questions, missing deadlines, or dropping out of the bid process entirely, it may not be due to disinterest. It might be that the process is simply too confusing or that communication is lacking. A quick review of your outreach methods and response tracking can reveal ways to simplify the experience and increase vendor participation.
Then there’s data. Many procurement teams struggle with visibility, such as not knowing how many bids are active, how much time is spent per solicitation, the cost of frequently purchased goods, or who the highest performing vendors are. Without the ability to quickly generate reports or spot trends, it’s difficult to anticipate budget usage, justify spend, improve sourcing decisions, or prepare for audits.
And finally, don’t overlook compliance. Procurement requirements vary across jurisdictions, and being caught unprepared, like missing a certification, failing to log an addendum, or storing documents in disparate folders, can expose your agency to unnecessary risk.
Fortunately, addressing inefficiencies doesn’t require an overhaul, and you don’t have to wait until next year’s strategic planning cycle. Some of the most effective improvements are also the most immediate.
For example, agencies using configurable digital procurement platforms like PlanetBids often streamline their approval workflows in just days. By utilizing pre-approved templates and setting clear, digital pathways for solicitation creation, review, and sign-off, you eliminate redundant steps and ensure faster decision-making without sacrificing oversight.
Similarly, automating vendor notifications at key milestones like bid openings, Q&A deadlines, or submission cutoffs can dramatically improve vendor engagement and reduce missed requirements. This not only saves time but boosts the overall quality of submissions and eliminates bid protests.
Evaluation processes can also benefit from a mid-year tune-up. If you’re still scoring bids in spreadsheets and emailing comments back and forth, consider shifting to a centralized review interface. It standardizes evaluation metrics, simplifies collaboration, speeds up scoring, and ensures every evaluator is working from the same criteria to create more transparency and trust.
On the compliance front, consolidating documents from filing cabinets into a centralized, digital repository can be a game-changer. It supports transparency, simplifies audits, and ensures nothing falls through the cracks. When paired with built-in reporting dashboards, you’ll have the data you need to identify trends, justify decisions, and plan more strategically.
Mid-year evaluations are not just about fixing what’s broken. They’re about optimizing what works. With much of the fiscal year still ahead, now is your chance to make intentional, results-driven changes that support your mission, improve vendor relationships, and deliver greater value to your constituents.
Whether it’s streamlining approvals, digitizing documentation, or simply removing one manual step that’s been bogging down your process, these improvements stack up. And the sooner you implement them, the sooner you’ll see the benefits.
Let PlanetBids help you address the bottlenecks and make your procurement more efficient. Check out our solutions for bid, vendor, and contract management and see how we've helped thousands of procurement professionals optimize their operations. Contact us today.