As the pace of procurement work increases for government, technology can play a role in system modernization to better prepare cities for emerging technologies.
“The new platform introduced substantial upgrades in user interface, approval workflows, and vendor integration — enhancing both our control mechanisms and our ability to meet operational needs with greater efficiency and effectiveness,” the city’s procurement leadership said in a statement, explaining that the new platform will provide enhanced visibility into spending.
The new procurement solution, powered by Glass’ technology platform G-Commerce, enables city staff to make compliant purchases from vendors while automating certain workflows and managing budgetary needs.
The platform first rolled out internally as the minimum viable product in May 2024, but Monday’s announcement marks its full integration and access to additional features and capabilities, like the full cross-departmental integration of the platform and the Government Procurement Concierge — essentially, a support system for users, according to Gerardo Mateo, Glass’ director of government platforms.
Using data from publicly available procurement records, the platform supports about $3 million in annual transactions and serves more than 10 city departments, including Fire, Finance, Public Works, and Community and Cultural Services.
The platform also offers an analytics dashboard for the city’s procurement team to get real-time insights into frequent purchases, environmentally preferred products, and top vendors.
Photo courtesy of Glass
In Santa Monica, the new platform’s analytic capabilities also support compliance with state Senate Bill 1383, which established procurement requirements related to environmental impact, Mateo explained. The dashboard provides a visual representation to give officials real-time insight into compliance and the ability to course-correct as needed.
Another benefit of the platform relates to the city’s Buy Local Santa Monica initiative, intended to ensure city government is also purchasing from local vendors, Mateo said. And for small, local businesses wanting to partner with the city, the partnership provides access to platform support both by phone and email.
“So, we are essentially removing the barrier of entry for those [local businesses] to start selling,” Mateo said.
The platform offers several features focused on the user experience, such as a single sign-on function for city staff and an integrated approval workflow capability. The latter, which is a new feature, means that purchases beyond predefined and approved thresholds will be routed to managers for review and approval, to speed the process of the broader purchasing life cycle.
One challenge for the city prior to this platform’s launch was the need to contact vendors regarding incomplete purchases, which sometimes required multiple steps to obtain an order’s tracking number, Mateo said. Now, tracking information is accessible within one platform.
For vendor fulfillment issues, the platform offers assistance through a help center with a live chat and hotline option through a feature known as the Government Procurement Concierge. This limits the amount of time city staff spend addressing problems, by reducing reliance on communicating back and forth with vendors. The company has completed more than 400 tickets through this feature, with a 99 percent resolution rate.
Santa Monica is not alone in modernizing procurement; government agencies from Pennsylvania to Denver have improved their own processes with tech.
Glass has supported 121 government agencies’ procurement modernization initiatives, with different customers migrating from different systems, Mateo noted. Santa Monica transitioned from ESM Solutions; other governments have migrated from systems including Jaggaer and EqualLevel.
Partnering with the company enables governments to access customized support for their unique needs, which may include city-specific branding. But G-Commerce also offers an open marketplace platform to support government agencies, which anyone with a purchasing card can access. For this, the company was awarded a contract under the U.S. General Services Administration's Commercial Platforms Program, to support and expand this work with federal agencies.
*This article was originally published by Government Technology, Industry Insider — California's sister publication.
