You're listening to WOSD. I'm your host, Layla Palmer, from the OSD Marketing, Engagement, and Training team. Thank you for joining us for another installment of WOSD News. In this episode, we will hear from OSD's Director of Vendor Development, Support, and Strategic Initiatives, Chris Olive, who will share information on the value of strategic partnerships in meeting the needs of Statewide Contract Vendors.
Layla: Chris, thank you so much for joining me today on WOSD News. This is your first podcast. How do you feel?
Chris: Oh, a little nervous.
Layla: A little nervous?
Chris: Yeah. Kind of excited, but nervous.
Layla: Okay. Well let's get the excitement going. It’s going to be fun. So why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us about your role at OSD?
Chris: My name is Chris Olive. I'm the Director of Vendor Development with the OSD department. And I’m new to working with the state, I've always been in private industry before. I've worked with companies from Fortune 500 to true startups running marketing and business operations. In some cases, I was building the audiences and creating partner networks. In other cases, I was becoming the partner or the reseller. So in all those, I was developing relationships to really understand what was needed in the partnership. And I enjoyed those roles because I was able to build something bigger than when it started. And that's what was emphasized with this role is partnerships and potential. And day by day, I'm seeing that is very true. There's just so much going on. There's so many different directions that Operational Services moves in, different teams, different interests, working with external teams. I'm really, really liking it, and yeah, happy to be here.
Layla: Well, we are happy to have you. Your new role as Director of Vendor Development, you gave us a little bit of a sprinkle, but why was it created? What need does it address for our Vendors? And then by extension, our Buyers. It all ties in together to really have those working relationships. So just talk more about that.
Chris: So it was created, and I'm learning this as I go more and more, really because working with the state is not easy. Especially for these small private companies who have built up their companies and are doing it their own way, right? Most of them, vast majority, are not on some kind of standard marketing, or sales, or financial planning program. They make it up as they go. And state processes are very strict, and they're very rigid, and they're very well defined. So companies have to adapt to that and they have to find a way to be a partner with the state. They have to find a way to adapt their processes, or create new processes that work with ours. And the potential is great. They know that. They know that they're going to have to adapt to some degree. And as a small company, they do that all the time, but the state poses special challenges, right? So on the other hand, yes, they need to learn our processes, but also we need to learn more about them and we need to be listening to them. OSD is here to help the state run the business of government. And we really need to know what that means and not just work in our own little box and talk to ourselves with our own language. We need to get outside of that. And so that's why this role was created to listen more to Vendors and to learn from them.
Layla: Chris's vision for OSD and its Statewide Contract Vendors centers on forging powerful partnerships. Knowing that these partnerships depend on public trust, OSD's Assistant Secretary for Operational Services, Mark Fine, has made it a top priority to cultivate stronger, more trustworthy relationships with both the valued business community of Vendors and government agency partners. A strategy he believes benefits everyone throughout the procurement process while achieving best value. Let's hear from Mark about the importance of building public trust and maintaining strong networks.
Mark: Trust is kind of, that's a big part of it. In some ways, an agency like ours, we're created to try to enable that, and demonstrate that government can be trusted with public resources and can make decisions in the public interest. So that's really important for us. I guess when you get into the Vendor dynamic and the relationships directly with our Vendors, you know, they're critical partners and how we work with them, how we treat them, the processes we create, the systems we use, all that matters to that relationship and dynamic. And there's a lot more I think we can do as an agency to build those strong partnerships with our Vendors. In a procurement agency, we sort of have to put parameters around our relationships. We have to ensure there's a fair, open and competitive process. That means, you know, we can't tailor things or have conversations with just one Vendor. At the same time, it doesn't mean we shouldn't be fostering relationships with the people we work with. I know for me, I'm new in this job, but in every place I've worked in government, in state government or other levels of government, just kind of getting those insights. And sometimes doing it in a way that's not always through a formal process, but just being able to have a conversation with some folks. You just learn a lot that way. And that informs your thinking and our practices. And I think it should. And I'm kind of hopeful with Chris's job that we created a position here to kind of help be able to glean that important feedback from our business partners in a more regular manner, and kind of make something of it. Like how do we use that to inform the way we work with them? I mean, if there's a hot take, the networks matter. I mean, they really do. There was always a phrase that I kind of liked, but it was, it was almost like “you shouldn't wait to reach out to people when it's an emergency.” Those networks are kind of like a way to just build your knowledge and keep more attuned to what's happening here, out in the world as opposed to just in your office or agency. It's how you hear things and learn things. So I'd say cultivating your networks over time is really important and being attentive to that is really critical.
Layla: Great insights from Mark Fine. Let's go back to Chris for more on his strategies for Vendor development. What are the biggest opportunities for improving the relationship between Vendors and buyers? Do Vendors feel isolated throughout the process? Do we need to mend those connections a little bit more? What do you think about that?
Chris: Yeah, so in my experience so far, definitely the Vendors feel isolated. They're trying to break in, and they have their own business process, they're selling to other places, but they're trying to learn about what it means to do business with the state and they just can't break through. So I think creating conversations and relationships between the Vendors and the Buyers is really important. It's going to take a while before I know the right fit and how to do that, but that's my intention is to have actual conversations between Buyers and Vendors so they each get more familiar with one another. You know, that includes standardizing Vendor training to begin with, standardizing how we talk to them, making better support resources that are really designed for the Vendors and not just for our processes. And then, like I said, increasing exposure to the Buyers. I come from marketing. When I look at these Vendors trying to reach out to Buyers, I started thinking about it as they need to know the buyer persona, who they're reaching out to. But the challenge I'm seeing is that the Buyer persona across the state is so different. It's large organizations, it's complex, matrixed organizations. It's also individual buyers in some cases because it's municipalities, it's state agencies. To give them one answer to that audience and who they should be talking to is...I haven't found an answer to it yet. There probably isn't one, but at least making them familiar with that spectrum would be good.
Layla: You mentioned the importance of training in all of this, the internal training that goes into it and the sort of change management aspect of your role working with Category Managers to adjust the way that they communicate with our Vendor audience. So what's the experience with that been like so far? Adapting to new processes can be a challenge, of course.
Chris: Sure. Yeah, so my approach to that is first learn about the Vendors, get a good understanding of what their challenges are, and how we can change our outbound language. How we talk to them, how we explain things to them, the consistency that we use. So once that's on the right path and some of the basic foundation training pieces for Vendors are in place, my plan is to then go back and talk to the Category Managers and explain how they can fit in and how they can support those efforts.
Layla: How do you balance the goals of compliance and the oversight that we have with the need to make this procurement process easier for the Vendors?
Chris: That's something I'm learning about quickly, that whole compliance aspect. But I've found that when I'm talking to Vendors, once they understand the requirements and the processes, they don't have a problem with it. There's always initial pushback because they don't understand it, and five minutes into the conversation, they're happy, they're comfortable, and they're agreeable. So this is all about education. But again, to your previous question, it's not just educating the Vendors. It's educating the internal teams too. The term compliance sounds very strict. And even to us it means so many different things. There are small programs that they're not familiar with, and acronyms, and there's financial considerations. So to a Vendor, that's not compliance. That's many different pieces in how it touches their business and what they need to consider. So there's a lot of back and forth. And I think as the training progresses, compliance will get easier.
Layla: Yeah, definitely. And if the listeners are interested in compliance and what it all is, we do have a podcast on that as well. Director of Compliance here at OSD, Camille Clark, very eloquently explained what it all means. If you're a Vendor, what it means for you and all of that. So that's a great resource as well. So going back to you, you're just a few months in, but success in your first year at OSD, what do you envision that looking like? Whether for you personally in your professional development, or for our Vendors and for our Buyers.
Chris: I'd like to see Vendors be more comfortable in our processes and the potential of their contracts. In some cases, that potential is enormous. In some cases, it's always going to be niche. But they should understand that going into it and not be surprised either in the workload and the demands or the lack of it. Just better understanding overall. And on the Buyer side, I'd like them to better understand the challenges and create more opportunities for new Vendors. The OSD team would be a stronger bridge between the two in that case. And personally, I'll be watching the expansion of new smaller and diverse Vendors and their successes and see what we accomplish for them. We do a lot of work internally, and we talk to ourselves all day and we know our processes really well. And I think the state externally tends to look like a locked box and they have to approach it carefully and struggle to find the opening. But there are a lot of people here that are very friendly, very helpful, very knowledgeable, and happy to be doing this work because we know how important it is. So yes, it can be hard to find the right person to talk to, but we're here, and we want to talk to you. Contact me, I'll put you in touch with the right person if I'm not. And look forward to doing more with the state.
Layla: This concludes today's episode on maximizing Vendor potential through strategic partnerships. If you are a Vendor seeking more information on maximizing potential by selling to the state, head to https://www.mass.gov/sell-to-the-state. OSD looks forward to engaging with you on our social media and YouTube channels. Links to those are in the description box. To suggest ideas for future podcasts, email the OSD team at osdoutreach@mass.gov.
Thanks again to Chris Olive and Mark Fine for joining us today.
This podcast was produced, audio engineered, and edited by me, Layla Palmer. Thank you for joining us.