George Cronin Award for Procurement Excellence

Circumventing Risk with Contract Management

In order to better manage its contracts, Michigan’s Central Procurement Services (“CPS”) developed a proactive Contract Management program by which it would ensure greater contract compliance by both the State’s agencies and its vendors. At its core, this program builds upon and formalizes the policies for what we should have been doing all along, while adding new processes, policies, and positions to effectuate the needed change. This program is designed to ensure that the State gets the full benefit of its contracts.

Market Analysis and Procurement Strategy

The Florida Department of Management Services (DMS), Division of State Purchasing utilizes the Market Analysis and Procurement Strategy (MAPS) process to determine which procurement method to employ and to achieve a best value for Florida. The MAPS process is used in determining if the Department should issue a new, competitive solicitation (purchases exceeding Category II, $35,000), to re-solicit an existing contract, to renew an existing contract or to allow an existing contract to expire. The MAPS processes resemble a research paper which highlights the following sections: background information, the current industry, customer and vendor information, pricing analysis to determine pricing of comparable contracts, risk assessment, special circumstances and a recommendation. The MAPS is an excellent tool for determining past procurement decisions and for determining what course of action is needed for future purchases, always keeping State of Florida customers in mind.

Innovation Begets Innovation: How Challenge-Based RFP’s Have Been a Winning Solution for Minnesota

The Minnesota Connected and Automated Vehicle Challenge (CAV Challenge) is a new and flexible procurement process that fosters innovation as the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) procures connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology. MnDOT approached our Office of State Procurement (OSP) with a problem—how could they harness the rapidly-evolving technologies associated with CAV through the procurement process? OSP and MnDOT met, and MnDOT was concerned that the typical narrowly defined requirements in a request for proposal (RFP) would inhibit vendors from submitting real technological innovation with CAV. OSP was wary of making statutory changes specifically for MnDOT and wanted to preserve the values of fair and open competition in the procurement process. Could we work within the statute? Could we preserve fair and open competition while helping MnDOT lead in CAV technology? Through collaboration we determined that answer is yes and the CAV Challenge was born. The CAV Challenge is open for vendors to apply to at any time. Proposals are reviewed every other month. Rather than narrowly defined requirements, MnDOT lists broad goals in the RFP, and vendors are scored to the extent their project aligns with those goals.

Excellent Data = Meaningful Analytics: Improving Vendor Report Information Management

The Operational Services Division (OSD) needed a tool that would simplify the reporting process and ensure the integrity of vendor-reported quarterly Massachusetts customer sales activity data and provide Business Intelligence (BI) analysis and defensible reporting of that data. This tool would provide an efficient, secure, and reliable means of collecting, managing, storing, and reporting on sales activity against statewide contracts, replacing a spreadsheet-based manual reporting collection process. The focus was on leveraging a highly configurable Software as a Service tool to replace the current Vendor Report Management spreadsheets.

Online File Requirements System

New York State Procurement Services establishes more than 1,300 centralized statewide contracts for commodities, technology, and services valued at approximately $22 billion for use by state agencies, municipalities, and other public and some nonprofit entities. As centralized procurement, we are tasked to acquire commodities and services at competitive, volume-discounted/reduced prices while complying with statutory requirements and ensuring the strategic effectiveness for all procurements. Two primary goals of centralized procurement are to 1) increase the percentage of authorized users buying from centralized contracts, and 2) act as a single customer to the vendor community on behalf of all state purchasers.