The landscape of digital tools for the state, local, and education (SLED) market has exploded in recent years. These new tools can greatly benefit public entities and suppliers alike. But it can also be challenging and downright overwhelming to navigate all this technology, especially for suppliers.
In a recent webinar, Pavilion spoke with procurement leaders across the country to discuss purchasing pathways and the tools used at each step. Here are some highlights from our discussion with Nathaniel (Nate) Rubel, Procurement Assistant Director at City of Port St. Lucie, FL and Paul Brennan, Director of Purchasing at County of Rockland, NY.
Purchasing pathways depend on various factors such as dollar thresholds, purchasing timeline, and funding source.
Procurement is responsible for making sure agencies follow compliance requirements while also meeting the needs of departments. While they are “guardians of the process,” they also guide their internal customers in departments in how to navigate this process successfully.
Typically, departments can make smaller purchases through their “P-cards” or obtain 3 quotes before making a decision. For larger purchases, agencies most commonly buy through one of two pathways:
- Run new RFP / bid: Run a formal competitive process to put a new contract in place.
- Use existing contracts: Buy through a cooperative contract that meets the agency’s needs and compliance requirements. This includes contracts from national and regional cooperatives, as well as states and local agencies.
When running a formal RFP or bid process, agencies need to advertise bids and evaluate supplier responses – typically using bid aggregators and eProcurement solutions.
“Right now we’re using DemandStar to advertise our formal bids and some informal quotes,” said Nate. “We’re in the process of transitioning to OpenGov to automate some of the processes we’ve had to do manually, such as creating templates, drafting contracts, routing documents to the proper approvers. We’re trying to find platforms that are free for businesses to use that increase the level of transparency that we can provide to potential vendors – and ultimately improve their experience when they interact with us.”
Increasingly, agencies are looking to buy through an existing contract instead of running a new RFP or bid process.
Purchasing through cooperative contracts allows agencies to purchase faster and reduce administrative overhead.
“A formal solicitation can take 3 months to upwards of 6 months. When you're leveraging existing contracts, you can go through the process in 1-2 months – or less,” Nate explained. “Our team is stretched, so we often assess the requests that come in and see if it’d be a good fit for an existing contract, where someone's already done the legwork for us to go through the competitive process. It takes the pressure off the staff and lets them work on the things that we have to put formal solicitations out there for, such as projects funded from sources that require us to do that. If it’s something that’s needed quickly, that lends us more to look for an existing contract to use, too.”
“We had a situation where a couple of our building elevators went down,” recalled Paul. “Our normal process would be to hire an engineering firm to develop a bidding specification, which would take anywhere from 4-6 months, and then go out to bid, which would take another 30-60 days, and then finally get a contract complete. We didn't have time to do that. We found an existing contract that we could use, and we actually saved $40,000 - $60,000. Because of the cooperative contract that we used, the elevator company did all the engineering work. And we didn't have to pay separately for that.”
"Our team is stretched, so we often assess the requests that come in and see if it’d be a good fit for an existing contract… It takes the pressure off the staff and lets them work on the things that we have to put formal solicitations out there for."
Nathaniel Rubel, Procurement Assistant Director
City of Port St. Lucie, FL
When purchasing through existing contracts, agencies have traditionally used cooperative, state, and local agency websites to find suppliers with cooperative contracts, but are now increasingly turning to Pavilion.
Traditionally buyers have used disparate websites such as cooperative, state, and local agency websites to find suppliers on cooperative contracts. Pavilion is now the go-to resource for buyers to search across these disparate sources and reach out to suppliers.
“We might talk to the incumbent supplier, but we’d also often want to look and see what options are out there that may be a better price out, have better scope – and generally a better fit to meet our needs,” said Nate. “In the past, we'd have to go look at all of these resources from cooperatives, our state contracts, federal government contracts, etc. We were recently made aware of Pavilion, and I’ve shared it with project managers in our departments. They’ve been raving about the ability to find a whole catalog of suppliers without having to go to individual websites or call up their colleagues.”
“We train our end users on how to use tools such as Pavilion to locate suppliers who may have things they need already on a contract,” added Paul. “Then, they can start submitting that information to Procurement.”
Additional tools may also come into play at the end of the purchasing process as a final check or to facilitate the purchasing checkout itself.
Paul also discussed how they use reference check tools to look up reviews from other public procurement practitioners, as well as market intelligence databases to obtain pricing benchmarks and other information. Furthermore, online checkout marketplaces can help buyers complete the final purchase.
For suppliers, identifying the right mix of tools depends on the specific needs & challenges of the business.
Mariel Reed, founder and CEO of Pavilion, discussed how suppliers can make more informed decisions around the mix of tools to invest in. “The key question to think about is: what are the biggest challenges you’re seeing in your sales and marketing funnel? You need a framework for how your business can engage with those technologies.”
To learn more, click here for the full webinar recording.
