And it's exciting for us because when we started out, we weren't thinking Cronin. This was not about showing off anything to anyone. It really was about we have a challenge. How do we get together and create a solution for that challenge?
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 two OSD innovators who were recognized as the Gold and Silver Award recipients for the prestigious George Cronin Award, awarded by the National Association of State Procurement Officials.
Engaging in public procurement and purchasing can be daunting, but it doesn't have to be. The procurement cycle has several steps, all working in tandem to ensure the right goods and services get into the right hands. But sometimes, Statewide Contract Vendors and Buyers need extra support to get through the process efficiently. Fortunately, the Operational Services Division is at the forefront of public procurement innovation, ensuring our agency partners get what they need when they need it.
Here at OSD, our subject matter experts are implementing innovative technology and business practices into the procurement process in Massachusetts. And we're proud that these efforts are recognized outside of the state. The National Association of State Procurement Officials, or NASPO, recently named two of OSD's forward-thinking projects as the Gold and Silver Award winners for the prestigious George Cronin Award for Procurement Excellence. Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with the subject matter experts behind these projects. Let's meet them and learn more about their roles at OSD.
My name is Ann-Maria Bennett, and I'm currently the Director of Category Management for the OSD. My team and I work together every day on preparing those products, those contract vehicles for our Buyers and other Eligible Entities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be able to access the goods and services they need from Statewide Contracts. So that's primarily what we do every day.
So my name is Jennifer Lyons. I'm the Deputy General Counsel here at OSD. So we are the Legal division that handles not only the internal procurement legal questions, but we also field questions from the 64 other agencies that we have procurement oversight for. So we are constantly talking to other general counsels and other agencies, as well as working with Ann-Maria's team very closely to set up the Statewide Contracts that all of the agencies then use, and oftentimes end up negotiating off of. So that's where we come in.
OSD is embracing the buzz around artificial intelligence by implementing the technology to reimagine the procurement process. On behalf of the OSD Legal team, Deputy General Counsel Jennifer Lyons presented Smarter Service, Safer Contracts: Transforming State Procurement with Dual AI Agents. This project introduces two distinct AI-powered tools, OSD's very own AI Chatbot and a specialized contract review tool. Let's hear more about this technology and how it may be used to streamline the procurement process.
This chatbot has specifically been trained on our Best Value Handbook, on our Contract User Guides, on our Job aids, on the Statewide Contract Index. So we really pull together all of these resources that currently people might be asking questions and going to individually. The more we use this, the more that we're going to be able to train the exact type of answers that we want the bot to use. And we're also able to, over the long term, pull out metrics that we're going to be able to feed back into training and to sourcing. So, you know, which agency is asking the most questions? That might be really important for compliance. Or what question is getting asked the most? That might be important for one of the Category Managers. What time of day are we getting the most questions in? That might be really helpful for the Help Desk.
Conversely, on the other end of the spectrum when you're setting up your contracts, there are a lot of kind of nuanced products and services out there that not every agency needs. So it doesn't make sense for us to have a Statewide Contract for every, you know, one-off product and service. And when agencies get to this point, they oftentimes end up negotiating their own IT contract, or their own consulting agreement, or their own product agreement. And this is not something that they do, you know, typically. So we've trained an AI agent that has learned all the IT terms and conditions. It's learned all the 27 information security policies that EOTTS puts out every year. So you'll upload either the corresponding RFR and all of its exhibits, and it'll basically generate a redline that flags anything that either dilutes or conflicts with those terms. And it also annotates it in the comments along the redline. Somebody who's already well-versed, that would take them on average about six hours. And the AI agent's able to turn it around in five to 10 minutes. And then it’s very important to keep the human in the loop. We still have to read that redline and we have to make sure that that redline's accurate. But significant savings for our attorneys, and hopefully just expanded and significant resources and help for the agencies that we support.
It's fascinating to learn about the potential of new technology to improve government processes, but that's not the only innovation happening at OSD. Next, Director of Category Management, Ann-Maria Bennett, will discuss her unit’s strategy to Improve Supplier Relationship Management with Multi-Supplier Business Reviews, a proposal that promotes time efficiency and collaboration during the Statewide Contract Vendor business review process.
Ann-Maria, at the heart of your project is the business review process. So why don't you talk about how this improves time efficiency for our Vendors and even our internal staff at OSD.
With a vendor pool of 1,400, it really consumes quite a bit of time to have one-on-one business review sessions with these Vendors. At the time when we started, we had a team of nine contract managers who were conducting these sessions. So, you know, we had to get creative. We had to think innovatively. How could we, you know, really foster those relationships to create the output that we're looking for, making the best use of our resources, our people resources and our time resources. And so that was kind of what got us to the end result. There were lots of iterations in between, but we finally concluded on a method, a strategy that we thought was most effective. We've tried it out for a year, and we really are receiving the benefits of it.
So what we decided to do was instead of having these sessions one-on-one with our Vendors, we thought about how could we pull like vendors together and still benefit from that relationship building. How could we transform those sessions from just information sharing to really get into the core of what matters? What is it that's going on in your industry? What it is that's making you as a Vendor be successful, or not? What are the ways that collectively OSD can support you to support our Buyers? We started out with groups of five vendors at a time, and then over the successive quarters we added on to it, got it to a maximum of 15, and then we made an adjustment back down to 10 because we felt like 10 was the more ideal number of folks to have in a room together to have those conversations. And we've learned tremendously from these Vendors. We found that initially we thought Vendors would be a little bit apprehensive in sharing, with their competitors in the room. They don't want their competitor to know what gives them the edge, you know, for fear of losing that edge. But it has really been eye opening for us because Vendors are willing to share. They want to talk about those things that they can work on together as a vending community to strengthen their presence on our contracts and then to better service Buyers.
So we've had an entirely new section called Industry Discussion, and this is where our Vendors, before the session, they would tell us what are those key things in the industry that they want to talk about. And they would be leading the conversations. They'll be telling us about the trends that are happening, giving us updates on things like pricing, what to expect, production issues, supply chain interruptions that we can look for, or how we can mitigate against some of these things.
We've gone into things like responding to tariffs. It's just been a tremendous amount of learning and sharing and engagement that we didn't have the luxury of before because of how we were doing them. And these have translated into us being able to make adjustments in our contracts, being able to make plans for adjusting future contracts, and just being able to provide better information to our Buyers and better support to the vending community overall.
It's really a kind of synergistic win-win for both these projects, I think. Ann-Maria and I are very much working towards the same thing. So she is very much making sure that all of our Vendors are up to speed and they're compliant and doing the best that they can. And our team is very much on board with making sure that they are negotiating with those Vendors deals that are legal and compliant, and the more of both of those types of Vendors that we have on contract, the more services and products we have available for all of the agencies that we service.
The big part that sticks out to me is the Vendors interacting with one another and learning from each other, which is like, you know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Yeah. And we've gotten good feedback from them too, you know, that they've actually liked it. Like they've taken the time out, some of them, to feedback to us that this process, it's really good. I feel like it's a good use of my time. I feel like I'm contributing to OSD's mission in making good Statewide Contracts. So we're hearing from them too about how it's benefiting their businesses.
That's great to hear.
As Ann-Maria discussed the improved business review process and its potential impact on future procurements, I was reminded of Jen's previous comment about the synergy between these projects and how they interact with one another during the procurement cycle. Let's hear more about how OSD's Category Management and Legal Units work hand in hand to improve the procurement process for its agency partners.
So this question wasn't in the list that I gave you, but I think it just sparked my curiosity as I'm hearing you discuss these. How do these projects, if at all, interact with one another in terms of the cycle of the procurement process?
I mean, I think Ann-Maria's team is just going to be sending us better and better Vendors to work with. Honestly, because you're getting to work with them on compliance and metrics and what the process is before they're even getting to the Legal team to negotiate. So, you know, a lot of what the compliance is, too, that they're working on is major contract specifications, such as the supplier diversity plans and those sorts of things. So, if the Vendor is really already caught up to speed and well engrossed in this process, it really makes our job synergistic. It kind of flows right into the next.
It absolutely does because you are dealing with the Vendors at the beginning. Like for those new Vendors who are coming onto the contract, they would have been taken through that period of, let's call it learning, where they have a bit of appreciation for terms and conditions. And so by the time they get, let's say, a year in the contract, it now is not such a big issue for us to manage. So when we're having those conversations, we're not spending as much time talking about our contract terms and how to be compliant, because they would have already learned so much from the beginning process that Jen's project is going to improve so much. So it really is a cycle. It's going to be a cycle of efficiency as the Vendors flow through these different processes, and we're just going to reap the benefits.
Yeah. I know. We should have combined them and been like, you can never beat us together.
But it really goes to show that you're really changing the procurement process from start to finish and improving it. And I know, Jen, in your submission, you stated that AI agents can reimagine the world of procurement. So talk more about that. What's in the future of what ABE and OneL can do, and how it can improve the procurement process even more as time progresses?
I automatically get confronted all the time with AI that, like, you're going to be taking all these jobs away, or aren't you training something to take your own job away? And my answer to that is like, no, I have found like a thousand times more work. If anything, we've never had the manpower really to efficiently oversee all of the contracts and Statewide Contracts that technically we have oversight of. You know, it would just be an insane amount of attorneys that we would need. So I really just see this as being able to really help agencies because it's challenging enough work to negotiate an IT contract if you do it every day and you're well versed in it. If you don't do it every day and you're fully engaged in other life-saving entities that we do here in the Commonwealth, it's an even harder job to make, you know, an efficient and effective job of that maybe 10 % of what you need to do. So this is a way for really us to reimagine that process and be able to be more of a support arm and help these teams with negotiations without taking on all of their contracts on our own.
Similar question to you, Ann-Maria. Obviously these projects live on past the Cronin Awards. What's next in the business review process? Will Category Management continue to work out some of the kinks, if there are still any? The different sizes of the groups, will that evolve to be something different in the future? What do you think that will look like as time goes on?
So where we are actually now is we're looking back a year into the process. We've had some incredible benefits, but we always can continuously improve. So we're taking a look at the process as it is. One of the things that we don't ever want to lose is that one-on-one connection with our Vendors. And so is there a way that we can incorporate that even in this model? Is there a space for us to still have some of those one-on-one sessions, maybe with those Vendors who need it more than others? So that's something that we are looking at as well. I'm hoping that we can share what we've done, what we're going to maybe continue to change it into with our other partners, our other state partners, so that they can get some of the benefit that we are enjoying with our Vendor community.
Just to echo Ann-Maria is that we're hoping to continuously evolve into different iterations. I would love to eventually have some of these tools in the agency hands. We're still training and we're still getting our feet wet with it. So that's all in good time. But yeah, I think all these things are going to be really exciting for the agency.
Really exciting. And it's exciting for us because when we started out, we weren't thinking Cronin. This was not about showing off anything to anyone. It really was about, we have a challenge. How do we get together and create a solution for that challenge? So to be at this place where now everybody's like, oh, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. It's a real win for the team. We really feel good about it. And whatever happens in Chicago, at this point, it's really immaterial. We feel like we've already done so much, and we've already heard so much about how this can be a game changer. And we're just so much more committed to making it even better.
Yeah. Well, your commitment shines through. So thank you, and congratulations.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes today's episode on OSD's award-winning submissions for the 2025 George Cronin Award. Congratulations to the OSD Legal team for winning Gold and the Category Management team for winning Silver. 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 Jennifer Lyons and Ann-Maria Bennett for joining us today.
This podcast was produced, audio engineered, and edited by me, Layla Palmer. Thank you for joining us.