5 Pain Points of Vendor Management by Public Purchasing Professionals
As a procurement professional in the public sector, you understand the importance of effectively managing vendor relations and tracking performance. You have the crucial task of meeting the highest standards of fairness and transparency to satisfy compliance requirements. But without a streamlined tool, compliance and providing a positive vendor experience can be hard to balance. This often results in fewer responses from desirable suppliers and can lead to more costly outcomes.
Connecting to your suppliers can be challenging. In this article, we will discuss the typical challenges that arise within the Sourcing process related to vendor management and how using a Source-to-Contract solution and digitizing your processes can benefit your team in the long term.
#1 Outdated & Missing Vendor Information
Pain Point: Maintaining vendor information can often be challenging as it can become outdated as soon as it's recorded. The traditional email list or spreadsheet methods for managing vendors also require manual effort for collection and upkeep. Like any business, contact information for the main sales representative is always changing. This adds another layer of uncertainty if your departments or procurement team are keeping a manual list of contacts. It's highly probable that a significant amount of manually processed vendor information is incomplete or outdated, considering the difficulty vendors face with paper-based registrations.
In addition to the time-consuming manual processes for the public sector employees, the vendor community also struggles with maintaining accurate information on their location, personnel, and updated services and products. With 90,000 local governments throughout the country, suppliers do not want to manage information or local government registrations independently. Instead, they tend to prefer an online community in which multiple public sector entities are using the same solution.
Solution: A cloud-based Sourcing tool can help you manage your vendor information by providing a place for vendors to create their business profiles online. The online profile can then be updated by the vendor at any point in time. Sourcing tools like Bidnet Direct can provide an end-to-end user experience that enhances supplier-buyer relationships. Also, Bidnet Direct has a dedicated vendor support team that is always available to help customers with the system. We provide vendor outreach to educate and remind vendors of updates and other educational materials. With these services, you and your team don’t have to go through your spreadsheet quarterly and contact each supplier to update their information, ultimately saving you time and resources.
#2 Vendor Compliance Errors
Pain Point: Local government procurement and contract teams must ensure vendor compliance by collecting and maintaining a significant amount of documentation for each contracted supplier, ranging from W-9s to Certificates of Insurance. Moreover, since most of the required documents expire, they must be updated regularly. Collecting documentation manually requires contract specialists to spend time tracking down vendors to collect or update necessary documentation.
Solution: A dedicated supplier portal is a good indicator of an excellent Sourcing solution. Bidnet Direct’s registered suppliers can upload their W-9s, Certificate of Insurance, MWDBE Certificate, and other special requirements in their user profile. In addition, the system will notify them of the required documents before they can submit electronic bids. This feature helps maintain compliance with your requirements, meaning less hassle for your team and the vendor.
#3 Difficulty Finding Specialized or Local Vendors
Pain Point: Local governments require certain services that are best provided by local or specialized businesses. However, the manual processes pose a significant challenge for these businesses. Due to their limited time and resources, local businesses struggle to keep their registration information up-to-date, and the lengthy process often deters them from participating altogether. As a result, the burden of manual processes prevents local governments from easily identifying and collaborating with qualified local businesses.
Solution: By using a Sourcing solution, you are part of a bigger buyer-supplier community. Bidnet Direct has the largest public sector supplier database in entire North America. This shared vendor database allows you to find and expand your pool of local or specialized vendors. In addition, pre-qualified vendors or vendor lists can be easily collected. Bidnet Direct’s Sourcing solution includes Vendor Certification and Qualification Management that can reduce the lengthy process of gathering qualification documents.
#4 Reporting Small Business & Minority Vendor Participation Issues
Pain Point: The pressure on local governments to report on their vendor population is continuously growing, whether it be for the use of federal funds, or meeting small and minority business goals. However, the use of paper files and disconnected spreadsheets makes it almost impossible to respond to these reporting requests, let alone do so promptly.
Solution: Your reporting needs can be attained with Sourcing tools. With a vast vendor database that can be filtered by location, your own vendor list, and an auditing feature, reporting for your compliance requirements can be done quickly.
#5 Fewer Bidders – Higher Costs
Pain Point: The challenges mentioned above eventually lead to a decrease in the number of participating vendors. This, in turn, results in fewer competitive bids and higher costs for local governments. If the number of bids received is insufficient or the responding vendors are not qualified, the government may have to re-issue the RFP, which would consume more time and expense.
Solution: An excellent Sourcing solution provides a feature where you can send solicitation invitations to matching vendors. Bidnet Direct offers both manual bid invitations and automatic solicitation matching. This feature can help you find the right vendors to bid on your solicitation without spending too much time and effort.
A Source-to-Contract Solution Can Help You Navigate Through These Pain Points
We understand that being a procurement manager in the public sector has a lot of challenges to face. But connecting to your suppliers while maintaining high standards doesn’t have to be so difficult. Included in Bidnet Direct’s Source-to-Contract solution is a feature called Connect, which represents our robust vendor management feature. This can help you and your team find the right balance between connecting with suppliers while mitigating risks and expanding outreach.
Connect’s built-in tools – including vendor registration, evaluation, contract management, and performance management features – provide a significant advantage by detecting vendor risks and taking necessary actions promptly, ultimately limiting the possibility of vendor performance issues.
Public sector procurement professionals like you deserve to have the best solution to get the job done right. Bidnet Direct is dedicated to connecting public sector buyers and suppliers. Contact us today to see how Bidnet Direct’s Source-to-Contract solution can help your team connect with your suppliers in the long term.
Find out how Bidnet Direct can help your government organization today! 
