Have you considered setting New Year's resolutions for your procurement team? Many of us are focused on personal resolutions, but as working professionals who spend about one-third of a 24-hour day on the job, it’s a good idea to reflect on how we can improve our work lives.
At your first team meeting of the year, consider a discussion on setting resolutions to address problem areas in your processes and implementing innovative ideas for the future.
Based on PlanetBids’ interactions with our clients across the country, we often hear testimonials on how eProcurement has transformed operations. Here's a sampling of procurement insiders’ goals for 2023:
Nix Unnecessary Meetings
Project evaluations in person? No thank you!
“Trying to get 12 people in a room and trying to get them to be confidential about what they’re doing didn’t work at all,” said one former school district purchasing director.
An online Project Evaluation solution, like the module offered by PlanetBids, allows evaluators to review a project from their own computer, comment on it, and score it from the comfort of their home or office.
Save Paper, Save Time
A process that relies on paper – whether it’s hard-copy advertising, issued paper solicitations, or sending proposals by mail or in-person – is slow by default. Solicitation postings, bid submissions, addendum issuance, and compliance tracking are much faster when done online from a computer.
Wouldn’t you rather use the time to strategize?
Control Bid Participation
An online certification process put the procurement professional in control of prequalification certification and increases real-time tracking on Small Business Enterprise and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise participation goals.
Take Construction Bidding to the Next Level
Construction bids are intense and require many documents, including a list of subcontractors and bonds. Cloud-based eProcurement software helps vendors reach out to potential subcontractors and include them on their bid submissions while reducing the stacks and stacks of paperwork that needs to be managed and filed. And the PB System™ accepts eBonds!
Grow Your Vendor Pool and Include Minority Businesses
An online platform opens the door for vendors inside and outside of your region to register, giving you a wider pool of talent to bid your work. Your team may access other agency databases from the region to augment your vendor pool as well, including minority, women-owned, and disadvantaged businesses.
Improve Contract Management
Once a contract is awarded, it often is handed over to a customer department to manage for the lifetime of the contract. If it’s filed away in a drawer, performance monitoring can fall by the wayside. Out of sight, out of mind, right? But if those contracts are stored online with easy access, including reminders for set tasks, the procurement and customer departments can ensure that all performance standards are met and that the contract is renewed in a timely manner.
Track Insurance Certificates
Insurance is one of the hardest items to manage, with little follow up to ensure there is compliance. An online procurement system eliminates manual tracking of expiration dates and hand entering of insurance data. It also neatly ties into contract management and helps manage all aspects of contract compliance.
Experience New Ways of Procuring and Bidding
Online procurement processes mean no more printing, reviewing, and filing away reams of paper documents. Vendors and agency evaluators no longer have to drive dozens – or hundreds – of miles to submit a bid and to hear it be evaluated, and deadlines are easier to make. Save your taxpayers money, get better bids in on time, and reduce your carbon footprint by moving procurement online.
If your team hasn’t yet moved toward automating your operations, 2023 can be the year to make that happen. PlanetBids offers the PB System™, a digital platform of interconnected modules that cover the entire slate of eProcurement processes, with a team of former procurement professionals to help you set up your online purchasing processes.
Contact PlanetBids today to learn more about how the PB System™ can help your team achieve their resolutions.
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