2019 Purchasing Resolutions!
With the welcoming of 2019, it’s that inevitable time of year again – time for New Year’s Resolutions. Many people have different forms of resolutions (health, travel, career, etc.) in order to better themselves. But have you thought about what resolutions you could make for your organization’s purchasing department in 2019? Many professional resolutions mimic your personal ones- get healthy, save money, spend more time doing what you love, etc. Read on and learn how you can stay on track with your resolutions for the New Year!
Save time (stop spending precious time on mundane tasks!)
Adding time throughout the day to work on more strategic initiatives can be positive for any purchasing professional. Often you may wear several hats within your organization, and having more time can allow you to focus other on other tasks throughout the day.
How do you save time? Automating tasks and processes can be a huge time saver. What if you could virtually automate the entire bid distribution process with an online purchasing platform such as BidNet Direct? Instead of spending hours searching through excel files for past vendors or researching perspective vendors on Google for each solicitation and then contacting each vendor individually, your agency can save time by issuing solicitations on BidNet Direct. Posting your solicitation provides thousands of registered vendors with direct access to your solicitation information and invites them to submit their responses, with simply a click of a button!
Additionally, your agency’s contract specialists can save time by utilizing the contract management section of the platform. This allows your agency to easily access contracts expiring in 90 days, COI forms, document templates and more. By cutting out the process of both re-writing and finding documents and contracts continuously, you and your agency can gain valuable time back in your day!
Vendor outreach and contract management are just the tip of the iceberg with tools designed to save you time with a sourcing solution such as Bidnet Direct; reporting, approval workflow, award management, bid response evaluation and more will save hours of time and allow you to focus on strategic purchasing and research initiatives.
Get more organized (with better reporting & info gathering)
Do you wish you had data for your bids at your fingertips? Local government organizations such as yours often wish to add auditing and tracking abilities to their purchasing process, and 2019 is a great time to start! Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have reports on-demand and organized for all published solicitations? BidNet Direct provides instant reporting at the click of a button, allowing you a more transparent purchasing process. Your agency can track your vendors, awards, and contracts all in one central location. This can provide your agency with a more comprehensive view of your data to provide outside of the purchasing department to commissioners or other stakeholders.
You can also track a specific solicitation from start to finish. Tracking from the start means that you can gain insight as to how many document downloads and bids your solicitation may receive, or the possibility that your solicitation may not be providing the necessary information your vendors need. The platform’s ability to track this information and keep everything organized for your agency also means less physical space needed to house this information.
De-clutter (get rid of paper)
A common resolution for people every year is to become more organized and de-clutter. So why shouldn’t your organization aim for the same goal in 2019? It may be time to start taking your purchasing process paperless. Rather than having previous bid and vendor information stored in different places, the BidNet Direct platform provides you one central location where you can manage your vendor list, bid and award information.
You'll also be able to remove the clutter from your desk by accepting responses electronically! If responses are accepted electronically (or even scanned in manually after the solicitation closes), you’ll no longer have stacks of bid responses strewn throughout your office and desk. BidNet Direct provides your agency with the ability to take your entire purchasing process paperless, meaning you no longer have to have copies of each of your solicitations and bid submissions stored in a bulky filing cabinet in the corner of your office. By going paperless, your agency can get better organize your purchasing process!
Save money (with vendor competition & no out of pocket expenses for purchasing tools)
Why not look to start saving your organization more money in 2019? One of the best ways to save money is by increasing your vendor outreach and competitive bids! There are thousands of vendors registered on BidNet Direct, so your solicitations will now reach more vendors! With more vendors seeing your solicitations, that will increase competition among your vendors to earn your business.
As always, BidNet Direct provides our core vendor and bid management and the majority of its functionality at no cost to your agency! With value added services like our Contract Management module, BidNet Direct can improve every aspect of your agency’s purchasing process!
Your organization will also save money by taking your purchasing process paperless. By going paperless, your organization will eliminate the costs associated with paper and ink required for the printing and distribution of bid information both externally to vendors and internally for evaluations.
The best part is that these resolutions are easy to follow through on! Once you get up and running on the BidNet Direct platform, you’ll never want to go back into your old “habits” of doing things. Make this year the time to streamline your purchasing process.
Find out how BidNet Direct can help your government organization today! 
