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, I sit down with Senior Category Managers Tanya Reeves and Ryan Johnson, who discuss OSD's Category Management strategy and share valuable information about Statewide Contract User Guides.
Layla: Thank you Tanya Reeves and Ryan Johnson for joining me on WOSD News today. How are each of you doing?
Tanya: Wonderful. Thank you for having us, Layla.
Layla: Well, thank you for coming on. I'm so excited to have this conversation about Category Management and our Contract User Guides. So first Tanya, why don't you start us off and just introduce yourself to our listeners.
Tanya: Absolutely. Hi everyone. I'm Tanya Reeves. I am one of the Senior Category Managers here at OSD, the Operational Services Division. And my job is to support the work that our Category Managers do in executing our Statewide Contracts.
Layla: And how about you, Ryan?
Ryan: Thank you again for having us, Layla. So I'm Ryan Johnson. I'm the Senior Category Manager for IT Services. So just like Tanya, I work very closely with the rest of our Category Management team. And I provide strategic oversight in particular for the IT and professional services categories.
Layla: So to give some context, at OSD for a really long time, up until about a year or two ago, we were doing the traditional Strategic Sourcing for our procurements. And then we transitioned to Category Management. So why don't you talk about what Category Management is and why we made that transition as an agency?
Tanya: Absolutely. Category Management is a procurement strategy. It basically helps procurement professionals better understand spend and how to optimize that. It allows organizations to better organize and analyze their data, to identify the best opportunities to save money, and improve quality and increase efficiency. OSD made the change from Strategic Sourcing to Category Management in order to develop a true end-to-end strategic approach to our procurement process. Category Management prioritizes the Buyer experience in every stage of the contract lifecycle to ultimately enhance customer satisfaction. So we wanted to put our Buyers in every step of our process. So OSD, as you know, is the oversight agency for Statewide Contracts, which means that it is our responsibility to vet Vendors that offer the products and services our Buyers and eligible entities need to operate their agencies and to ensure best value in our Statewide Contracts.
Layla: After having some experience with Category Management for the past year or two, what are your thoughts? What do you think? Strategic sourcing, Category Management, what are your thoughts?
Tanya: I think that it was a great transition for us. Obviously with change management, there are hiccups, there are questions. Why are we doing this? But now that we've been engrossed in it and we're engaged fully, we can see the benefit and our Buyers can see the benefit as well. You know, Strategic Sourcing is still a part of what we do. We have to think about the future. We have to think of not just within our own realm, but we think about our Vendors, we think about our Buyers, we think about what the trends are that are in the market. It just forces us to really have a full, engaged experience. There are benefits to Category Management that I see outside of Strategic Sourcing, and some of those key benefits include how we grouped our products and how we grouped our services. Basically, we took our contracts and we grouped them in a way that would make it easy for our Buyers. That's ultimately the goal. So here at OSD, the Category Managers work in pairs. That was one of our criteria in moving from Strategic Sourcing to Category Management. We wanted to create teams that would build expertise within their particular categories. And ultimately, you know, that means you're working with a partner and you're sharing ideas and solutions in procurement and putting your best efforts in our work, right? Also Category Management creates, like I said, expertise in Category Managers, and it helps out Buyers that may have specific questions around specific needs within the contract specifications. Did I answer your question?
Layla: You did, very well. Thank you so much. So now that we have that roadmap for what Category Management is, let's talk about some more ways that it specifically will impact our users. Explain to our listeners what are the Contract User Guides and explain some of the things that are different in them that users will see now that they may not have seen a few years ago.
Ryan: Sure. So just as you said that Category Management is really the roadmap from a process standpoint in terms of how we approach our procurements, our Contract User Guides, or CUGs, really serve as roadmaps for our Buyers when they look to interact with those Statewide Contracts once they're stood up. They’re a lot more than just sort of high level summaries of what our contracts are. They offer a lot of really great information about each contract that really aims to support Buyers and their day-to-day decision making. Within the Category Management strategy that Tanya just described really well, I think they're more important than ever as we look to optimize all of our contracts and really make the process of using them and understanding them as easy as possible for Buyers.
Layla: For those who may not have ever used them before, what are those key features of the user guides? What things can people find in them beyond just this is the product or service offered?
Ryan: Looking at a Contract User Guide, you can really easily identify, you know, as you kind of pointed out, what products or services are included in the contract, which Vendors are awarded, any particular certifications those Vendors might have, and we'll get into that a little bit later. The process for soliciting quotes and a lot of other really helpful information about the contracts. But what we're actually really excited about now is that we're going to be going live with the HTML version of our Contract User Guides, which I think is probably going to be the most significant enhancement to our C.U.G.s since their inception. The content will all be completely web-based and organized within different tiles, which is going to make it a lot easier for users to find the content that's applicable to the type of Buyer they are, whether they're a municipality, a college or university, or an executive agency. From what we've seen, it's just, it's really night and day, especially users just being able to go right to the section that they want, which is feedback that we get a lot. We're also going to be able to make updates to the CUGs much more quickly to ensure that Buyers have access to the most up-to-date information at any given time. And then the other great thing about the HTML version that I want to point out is that it's going to fully comply with accessibility requirements which means that our CUGs will truly be usable by everyone, which is something that's really important to us. You know, giving all users an equal opportunity to interact with our contracts is something that we're really excited to take a step with for this particular project.
Layla: If I was a Buyer, can you walk me through how I would navigate a Contract User Guide based on some of these changes? So if I was looking for an IT service, for instance, what category would I find, how would I navigate the user guides in that way?
Tanya: Sure, so let's look at ITS78. This is a contract for Data, Cybersecurity, and Related Audit, Compliance and Incident Responses Services. If I were a Buyer looking for a contract in the current state of our user guides and I was looking for a contract that provided cybersecurity testing and readiness services, there's several ways to search based on my level of experience as a Buyer using Statewide Contracts, right?
I would either begin on COMMBUYS, our e-Procurement system homepage, and search the Statewide Contract Search Index for my specific need, or I can search the Statewide Contract Reference Sheet, also found on COMMBUYS, and look through that sheet for the available IT contracts. Once I'm able to determine the contract based on my need, I would simply do a Google search for ITS78, and it would result in a direct link to our Contract User Guide for the contract. The user guides are so user friendly and provide the key points of interest for our Buyers as Ryan spoke about, and you would proceed to read through that for your purchasing. So let's look at the user guide. It basically provides a contract summary and it highlights the contract dates, the Category Managers, quote requirements, and Vendor listing. Like those are just some of the areas within that summary on the very first page because what we have found in Category Management it’s what our Buyers are looking for right away. Other areas that they may pause and look at include the Contract Categories, How to Purchase, benefits of using the contract are listed, the Vendor list, links to COMMBUYS, our Master Blanket Purchase Orders, and some contracts even have restrictions, which is definitely an area of interest for our Buyers and a frequent request that we see as well. For this particular example, I would search for the category and find that there's a Category 3 on the ITS78, and Category 3 is Cybersecurity Testing and Readiness Services. I would then go to the Vendor Listing for Category 3 to find those specific Vendors available under the contract and follow the guidance of the user guide to request quotes and to then initiate the purchase.
Layla: So a lot of information to be found in our user guides. Are there any other specific sections in the user guide that users may not be expecting that could be super useful or anything like that? Maybe information about contract pricing or about EPP products, or things of that nature. Are those found in the user guides?
Tanya: They absolutely are.
Ryan: Yeah. So I'll take the pricing one first. So there's a couple of different ways that a user could find contract pricing, right? Some contracts have a single price file containing the pricing for all awarded Vendors, and that's going to be stored on the Master Contract Record in COMMBUYS, which is hyperlinked directly from the Contract User Guide. Other contracts have a price file for each individual awarded Vendor, and that's going to be stored on each Vendor's Master Blanket Purchase Order. In either case, though, Buyers are able to access those locations by direct hyperlink from a number of different places within the Contract User Guide, most notably the table of awarded Vendors. Some contracts also have Vendors that offer PunchOut Catalogs within COMMBUYS, which is an enhanced way for Buyers to view contract pricing and place orders directly through the system. And there's information about that in the user guides as well. Even though the answer to this question is going to be different contract to contract, the great thing about the user guide is that the Buyer can get to that answer for every contract. And they're all going to be laid out in the exact same way so that you can easily navigate to that type of information.
Layla: So where can we find information about EPP products on the contract?
Ryan: The Contract User Guides have an entire section pertaining to Environmentally Preferable Products and Services. That section will let Buyers know if the contract includes EPP offerings, and it'll also explain how to locate and identify those products when you're considering your purchases. Some contracts might identify those items on their price files or in some other way to let Buyers know exactly what those products are. But as is the case with everything here, all that is going to be in the user guide exactly laid out, you know, what you're looking for.
Layla: Awesome. And then how about quote requirements?
Tanya: Each contract has specific guidelines when it comes to quote requirements. So it's very specific to the contract, but it would definitely be in that contract summary box, in the Table of Contents, and then a section on its own as well.
Layla: Amazing. Well, lots of information about our Contract User Guides. We highly recommend to read through them fully, but in an age of technology where people are, I would say, less likely to really read through that entire document, we definitely recommend that you read through the specific sections that we mentioned today. Those are going to be super useful as you are going through your procurements and just navigating the procurement process. Do you guys have any final words for our listeners? Things that you're looking forward to with these new changes coming up with the HTMLs, or anything like that?
Ryan: Yeah, I would just encourage any listeners to take a look at the HTML version when it launches in the coming weeks. I think everyone's going to be really pleased at how easy and informative the CUGs will be as a result of this project. So yeah, I think that would be my biggest piece of advice.
Tanya: Absolutely. I would say that, you know, we want to hear from you. We want to hear from our Buyers and even our Vendors. I know we didn't speak a lot about the Vendors, but we definitely want to hear from you. We want you to share your experience. Let us know how things are working, where the pain points are, and how we can better improve the work that we're doing for you. So it's important that we hear from you. It's part of our process to be strategic, to be stronger Category Managers.
This concludes today's episode. Thank you to Tanya Reeves and Ryan Johnson for joining us today. Look out for those new and improved contract user guides at https://www.mass.gov/orgs/operational-services-division. 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 a future podcasts, email the OSD team at osdoutreach@mass.gov.
This podcast was produced, audio engineered, and edited by me, Layla Palmer. Thank you for joining us.