Streamlining Seminole State College’s purchasing process by going digital

Seminole State College is a public college located in Sanford, Florida. Boasting four campuses and serving more than 30,000 students, Seminole State is an educational institution of choice for young Floridians and one of the largest employers in Seminole County.

Seminole State College became a BidNet Direct member and joined the Florida Purchasing Group in 2019. Since that time, they have enjoyed significant improvements to their procurement process as a result of transitioning to an entirely online purchasing process.

Gregory Long, Procurement Director for Seminole State College, spoke with us about the College’s experience with BidNet Direct and the Florida Purchasing Group.

The Challenge

Long explained that Seminole State College is a relatively small school compared with other higher learning institutions in Florida and has only a limited budget available for procurement-related activities. With few resources to dedicate to purchasing, school procurement efforts were for decades paper-based and driven by manual processes. Long was seeking a way to streamline the purchasing process that would make it more efficient to allow his team to focus on more critical activities.

“We were already working with a local company that did our bids,” Long said. “But it was more like advertising [and] we were having to pay for that service.”

A colleague suggested that Long look into BidNet Direct as a way to centralize operations on a digital platform and improve visibility, efficiency and the audit trail for all procurement initiatives.

The Solution

BidNet Direct has transformed the way Long and Seminole State College manage procurement. Long is impressed with how BidNet Direct puts all bidders on an even playing field by ensuring that all bids are received electronically; no late bids can be submitted, and vendors know all bids are treated equally in the system. With a robust audit trail, Long can easily verify when a document was received or downloaded by a vendor, simplifying the audit process and improving transparency.

Because BidNet Direct allows authorized users to securely access procurement data remotely from any location with an internet connection, Long can receive bids, distribute documents and manage vendors from anywhere. Long also uses the Online Q&A feature of BidNet Direct, the available Bid Library and has begun conducting virtual bid openings. Long and Seminole State have used BidNet Direct to award contracts to vendors and send award announcements.

The ability to access procurement operations from anywhere is also a major plus for Long’s team, especially in the context of the ongoing pandemic. The team has been working remotely throughout the course of the pandemic, other than a few hours in-office over the past month.

Long said that the easy setup of BidNet Direct was a major source of satisfaction.

“You all have just been great,” Long said. “You’ve been flexible when working with me and timely on your response to me when I needed it. The setup was simple -- I was up and running in less than a couple of hours.”

The Results

One of the many significant efficiency improvements that Seminole State’s s purchasing department now enjoys is that customer service or technical support calls from vendors are now handled by BidNet Direct. The vendor support team takes the burden off Long and makes it simple for vendors to have their questions answered quickly. Long estimates that this has saved his small team in procurement over 20% of time spent per month with calls from the vendor community going primarily to the BidNet Direct vendor support team.

The highly visible audit trail available to Long and his team has made it easy to track which and when vendors downloaded documents and improving transparency while reducing the time needed to manage vendor communications. This feature estimated to have save them about 95% of time spent on communications per procurement since all that information is now available with a simple click or report. The College’s procurement team now utilizes the time saved to handle other strategic and emergency procurement initiatives.

Looking Forward

Long and his team intends to start using other tools available through the BidNet Direct platform, including Bid Evaluation and Contract Management, to begin enjoying the full range of benefits BidNet Direct has to offer. With Bid Evaluation, Long’s team will be able to easily organize and evaluate a high number of bids and quickly determine which vendor is offering the best value for Seminole State. Contract Management will allow Long to streamline the entire contract process, from creation to stakeholder approval to implementation and finally completion, and benefit from a transparent and detailed audit trail. The available contract templates will also facilitate the creation of new contracts as needed, saving time and resources.

Long said that his experience with BidNet Direct has been incredibly positive and rewarding from a procurement perspective. “It’s just been a wonderful scenario... I appreciate it and my team appreciates it,” Long said.

 

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