Hollywood, FL, Cuts Evaluation Time by Two Weeks and Reduces Paper Waste with Centralized Procurement

The Challenge

Ginah Joseph, Senior Purchasing Agent, and Randy Stovall, Contract Compliance Administrator, are a powerhouse duo with over 15 years of combined procurement experience. But even they were held back by uncentralized and outdated processes.

The City faced several procurement challenges: a paper-based process, siloed workflows, and difficulty managing evaluations and contracts. When developing solicitations, stakeholders passed around static Word documents, requiring a lot of back-and-forth communication and increasing the risk of errors and compliance challenges. When it was time to select a vendor, Joseph constantly pinged other evaluators to submit their scores, and keeping track of scoring was difficult.

The City also needed a system to manage contracts. Documents and attachments were scattered across the City Clerk’s office and other departments, making it challenging to track contract ownership, tasking, and milestone tracking. This caused Stovall significant stress, as the City manually organized contracts and often missed deadlines as a result.

To address these challenges, the City partnered with OpenGov to streamline the procurement process from start to finish. Here is what happened as a result.

The Results

To address these challenges, the City partnered with OpenGov to streamline the procurement process from start to finish. Here is what happened as a result.

Automated and Collaborative Solicitation Development

A centralized solicitation development process allows Joseph and her colleagues to work on solicitations simultaneously, eliminating the need for back-and-forth communication.

“We can work in the system together instead of sending the documents over to the department and waiting for a response,” said Joseph.

Joseph also appreciates the variety of templates to accommodate different bid types and delivery methods from ITBs to RFQ: “All of the information that the end-user puts into the system automatically transfers to the project,” said Joseph. “The automation tools and templates cut down on the amount of time that it takes to actually create the solicitation.”

Compliant Evaluations and Faster Decision Making

With centralized evaluating within OpenGov, scoring bid responses has become faster and more compliant. “The ability to send out notifications to remind evaluators to enter scores is a cool feature that we truly appreciate,” said Joseph, “We can also keep track of evaluator progress, which we couldn’t do before with Excel.”

Joseph also feels she has more control over how bids are scored, making the decision-making more compliant. “Other members can’t see how stakeholders are scoring because they have to submit their scores in the system,” which helps to ensure that evaluations are fair and impartial.

The evaluation process is now an average of two weeks shorter due to reduced back-and-forth and improved collaboration among evaluators.

Streamlined and Centralized Contract Management

From this point forward, the City will also manage and track all contracts within OpenGov. Stovall indicated that this would be a huge weight lifted off of his shoulders: “OpenGov has really created a process where we’re able to streamline our contracts into the system, and they’ve also made it very user-friendly.”

Storing and managing contracts in one central location has improved collaboration with other departments, taking the weight off Stovall’s shoulders.

“It’s not just me managing the contracts anymore,” said Stovall. “The departments are taking that ownership of managing those contracts and making sure that they’re staying on top of all the notifications whether it’s insurance that’s expiring, or milestones and performance metrics that need to be met.”

Hollywood, FL, has transformed its procurement process with OpenGov Procurement to eliminate paper waste, streamline operations, and improve collaboration and efficiency. The City is a shining example of how municipalities can use mission-driven technology to improve processes and create a more sustainable future for their communities.