ALGIM Webinar: Streamlining the Software Procurement and Vendor Selection Process through Lean Agile Procurement

Transcript

Justin Bagust:

Welcome everyone to this latest ALGIM Webinar on procurement and through Lean and Agile. I’m I’m your host, my name is Justin Bagust. I’m the CIO from Timaru District Council. Today we have Serge Kolman, who is the procurement contracts manager for Dunedin City Council. Surge has been at needed City Council for nearly five years in his role. With responsibility for procurement and contract management before joining DCC, he was in various procurement roles in the New Zealand health industry. As procurement manager for the Southern DHB, he assisted in setting up the National Shared Service procurement for the health sector, and then as a regional relationship manager for the South Island DHPs and he had a short stint as category manager. He moved to New Zealand in 2007 and worked in telecommunications industry in The Netherlands and various operational roles, including procurement.

Silverio Governo, Country Director at Portt, an Advanced Company, a seasoned relationship builder Silverio has built a strong track record in helping organisations in both private and public sector around the globe leverage the power of digitalisation and business process improvement, to deliver key results and overcome the most prevalent challenges. Across his more than 12 year’s experience in the SaaS landscape, Dunedin City council’s lean agile procurement process was the first he’d ever encountered, completely changing his perspective on a tender process.

Ross Darrah, founder ParetoToolbox. Ross has pioneered the development of the procurement discipline in New Zealand, and leads major procurement efforts with key organisations. Whilst his experience and procurement spans in many years back to when he was procurement director for Lion Nathan. He has been fortunate to work across a wide variety of sectors. Including agriculture, infrastructure, education, finance, utilities, local and central government, retail, manufacturing and not-for-profit. With Ross’s approach, he has delivered real solutions that have a direct and positive impact on the bottom line. His ability to create simplicity across every aspect of business has meant he’s really leaned into this lean agile procurement process to assist Dunedin City Council and the adventure to go to market more effectively. So here to talk about Dunedin City Council’s experience with lean agile procurement, I don’t know about you guys, but lean and agile and project management is something I’m certainly familiar with, but I haven’t heard a lot about lean agile procurement. So what on Earth does it mean? Why should we care about it? I’ll hand over to Ross. Firstly, what is lean agile procurement?

Ross Darrah:

Thank you, Justin. lean agile about procurement is simply a way to accelerate the selection process and other stages of the procurement life cycle by getting teams working together in a collaborative way and making decisions as a team in a defined timeline. The concept of lean agile procurement was invented by a gentleman called Mirko Kleiner in Switzerland, and he had successfully developed this concept and used it for his clients to help them choose ERP systems vendors within two days. Mirko came out to New Zealand as my guest in 2019 and has taught a number of organisations the mythology effort. And that’s since been adopted by Auckland Council, Watercare, Auckland University, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and now Dunedin City Council has become a disciple of the mythology as well. So that’s a bit of context. What it is? It’s taking away a lot of paper and taking away a lot of time and getting people to work together, talk with their suppliers and get answers to them, and then make decisions quickly. As Serge will demonstrate during this webinar, was very successfully executed at Dunedin City. Thanks Justin.

Justin Bagust:

Thanks, Ross. What was the driver for Dunedin City Council to adopt lean agile procurement? What were the challenges and some of the problems upfront that you wanted to solve? I’ll ask Serge for that one.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah. Thank you Justin. I think it’s important for us to always be looking out for better ways to procure right. We have a skill set. We have a set of tools available to us, but lean agile procurement was one of those ones where we were looking to implement because we’re looking to find better ways to procure, find ways to increase the buy-in from our stakeholders and we believed before we started on that lean agile procurement journey that lean agile procurement could be one of those tools that could help us achieve that. As a public entity, we obviously have to run processes in a certain way, making sure we get public value for money. But we’re also of the opinion that the process that we use should never dominate the outcome. It should help us get the right outcome and having a lean. Procurement as one of our tools in the toolbox will help us do that.

Justin Bagust:

So what are some of the drivers and why were Council keen to do it?

Serge Kolman:

Well, it was like I said it was trying to add some tools to our toolbox to be more flexible in the way that we procure and how we approach things. But it’s also about making sure that we have a better understanding of the the capabilities of the suppliers in that space and how we engage with our suppliers through a procurement process. One of the real benefits of a lean agile procurement process is that that one-on-one contact throughout the process, rather than sitting behind a piece of paper it gets us an electronic tendering service. So that was one of the one of those drivers for us.

Justin Bagust:

Why was this particular project the suitable candidate for the lean agile exercise?

Serge Kolman:

We looked at lean agile for our contract management and project management software because we had done a number of traditional procurement approaches for software within Dunedin City Council and so on paper when we got responses, they typically were really good fit for purpose and when we got to an implementation stage, often we found that they actually were not necessarily delivering what we thought they were going to deliver. And so we were looking for ways to make sure that that didn’t happen in the in the procurement of the contract management solution, and the project management solution. So we wanted to have that that interaction, that interactive process with our suppliers to ensure that we had a good understanding of the functionality that we were going to get, but also the the capability of the supplier and the way they behave to ensure that they act like real partners to us throughout the implementation process.

Justin Bagust:

So how would you identify what projects would be would be viable, you know, and what kind of projects?

Serge Kolman:

I’ll give that one to Ross.

Ross Darrah:

You’re too kind, Serge. Thank you for that. It’s a really important point just in that lean, agile procurement is not a penance here and doesn’t work for everything, right? And there is still a time to do traditional procurement and even traditional tenders, depending on the particular circumstances where lean agile procurement works well is when you’ve got complex product. It’s when you know the outcome you want, but you don’t know how to get there, and so in the case of Dunedin City Council, they knew they wanted a contract management system, but and there was a number of reasons why they needed that, as in a depository, activity, visibility and all that, but wasn’t totally sure of what was the right way to get there or what it was going to look like at the end and so that’s why lean there, Joe, work very well because it gave the shortlisted vendors an opportunity in two days to demonstrate why they were the right partner to work with, but also why their solution was appropriate to give gatisfactory answers to what we call user stories, which were various live case studies that we presented, will we explain the our problem. So let’s say you want to buy a widget or something non-critical electricity which has got a defined outcome, you know this is not the tool for you. But if it’s complex and you know what you want but you don’t quite know what it looks like, this is the tool for you. Thanks, Justin.

Justin Bagust:

Thanks, Ross. What was Council hoping to achieve by adopting Lean agile procurement? What were your goals and objectives? Serge.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah. So like I said previously, I guess really understanding the functionality of what we were doing was really. Key wanting to really understand that supplier capability, but also typically you know with a, with a written RFP or something like that, you have your written specifications, you put them out there and you look for a response and you go you go ahead with an implementation process. Like Ross said, one of the things that we didn’t really know. Even though we had, we thought we had a good idea of what we wanted, we didn’t really know what we wanted. So we needed that supplier interaction to make sure that we really got to an outcome that was going to deliver what we needed and what we needed wasn’t just a piece of software we need to lift our capability around contract management. So understanding that and engaging with suppliers that can help us in that space. That was really one of the objectives, key objectives of running this LAP process this way.

Justin Bagust:

So once you identify a project, validation is needed that it’s the right thing. Then how do you actually go about doing it? Or what are the next steps?

Serge Kolman:

Well, because so we, I attended the training that Ross was referring to earlier and but that was in 2019. We hadn’t had we hadn’t found an opportunity to actually use this process to procure something. So we made contact with Ross, I’ve worked with Ross before, he was used to be my CEO at some stage in my life and so we needed Ross to help us actually doing the validation process, making sure it was the Right project. We did quite a bit of research, we talked to other Councils, we had quite a couple of conversations with Auckland City Council, we spoke to Watercare, so we made sure we’ve done our research and work prepared. We then got Ross to come to Dunedin for a day, partially to do half a day of training for the stakeholders within DC to get a better understanding of what lean agile procurement is about and what it is. And then half a day to do the assessment and the validation that yes, going to a lean agile procurement process for this particular procurement activity is the right thing to do. So that was the validation process that we went through here at DCC before we decided, yes we’re going to push the button and we’re going to do a lean agile procurement process.

Justin Bagust:

Great. So when you’re going through that process, I suppose an important part is how you engage with the leadership? So how do you get to go down that path of getting approval? How do you get the stakeholders really involved?

Serge Kolman:

Yeah. So we have quite a well-defined process within Council. The procurement team here in DCC has been here for about five years since I joined and so we have a what we call a tenders board that we go to for approval when we want to procure, and we go to them once we procured it and we have a recommendation to the award the contract. So we set out to write a procurement plan, explained what we were procuring, explain in a bit more detail than what we probably normally would around the lean agile procurement process, and why that was a good idea for this particular procurement exercise, and presented it to our tenders board, which has a number of ELT members on it. Besides that, Stakeholder management is really important. Engagement conditioning of people is really important, so I have spent quite a bit of time, I guess, warming people up to what we were going to do and making sure that especially my manager, the General Manager Corp and Quality, he was an exec member as well, knew that this was coming and was supportive of the approcah and so when we presented it to tennis. Board it was. It was accepted, but we did need to do quite a bit of work to make sure that everybody was on board, especially with the approval process at the end because, like I said, typically we go back to the tenders board and say “right, we’ve procured this. We’ve done this process. Here’s the recommendation. Can you please approve it?” In this case, they were giving us the delegation up front to sign the contract on the day, so that was that was quite a new thing and a big step, so that took a little bit of time to get to make sure that they were comfortable with that approach and we made sure that my general manager was in the room for the two days to ensure that the oversight existed.

Justin Bagust:

Oh, what outcomes were you expecting?

Serge Kolman:

Of the process itself?

Justin Bagust:

Yes.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah, what we were expecting and hoping for, I guess, what is probably a better way of describing it was what I talked about before really finding that solution, finding that partner that could help us lift contract management within DC that’s really what it was about, and getting to a point of comfort at the end of the lean agile procurement process that we were ready to sign that contract and we were ready to go into an implementation process with that provider because that’s what you don’t know. So you go into the, we went into these two days and we were, we would have been perfectly willing to not sign a contract if it wasn’t the right solution, so that validation, that outcome, that was really important for us and I think we found that through, and I do genuinely believe that the process we went through helped us achieve that.

Ross Darrah:

Just to add to. Was the other key outcome, was the evaluation team was totally united about what was the right solution for the Dunedin City Council to go forward with. So through the experience, through asking questions and that direction with the suppliers and the markets talking amongst themselves. The final validation of the evaluation skills took 45 minutes and that was aligned and we were actually ahead of time on the schedule and could have contracts finalised before five o’clock and final drafts be shared to be signed that evening.

Justin Bagust:

That sounds like a pretty good result to me.

Serge Kolman:

Before we go. Yeah. No, it was a really good exercise to go through. But I mean, I could talk a little bit more in detail around the two days itself if that’s helpful?

Justin Bagust:

Yes, please. Yes, that would be very helpful.

Serge Kolman:

So we did this process in a two day session. So we in the lineage of procurement process you have a canvas which is effectively your RFP document, and I think there is a slide somewhere where it shows you that canvas, but the canvas is effectively telling the market, what there it is. What the middle section of the canvas is what we want, as these see as the customer and what our needs are. And then on the right, maybe the left hand side for the viewers, is what the time frames are, who the people are that are involved et cetera. And then the intent is for the suppliers to complete the other section, and the idea is that we find each other in the middle somewhere that we find that true north of partnership, I suppose. So the canvas is the RFP document. So on the day we did a presentation on our canvas, explained the needs, the wants et cetera. We did a little bit of a boost DCC and what do we want and how many people have we got, blah blah blah all that, that kind of stuff and then. One of the really important things I think about this process as well, as Ross referred to it already, is the user story. So that’s our end users actually telling suppliers. Here’s my problem. This is the issue that I go through on a day-to-day basis to explain what their issues are and what they need help with. That really then frames it up for the supplies in the room of how they can help us solve those problems. And that’s really, really useful. In a truly lineage of procurement process, typically in the theory you would then have suppliers present their responses with everybody in the room, but all based on feedback that we got from Auckland City Council, we decided to do the supplier presentations in private. So we had three suppliers in the room and if one supplier was due to present we would have breakout rooms for the other two suppliers who went who were not in the room when one supplier was presenting, but we would use that time to talk to those suppliers in the break up rooms about contract terms or negotiation, commercial terms, etcetera to make sure that we use the time as effectively as possible. Every time a supplier presented we would do an evaluation with the evaluation team to provide instant feedback on how the presentation went, how well they did in addressing our problems and how will the solution look? And so we went through the day going through those presentations, doing evaluations etcetera and at the end of the day, the team came together and we did a final evaluation for the day and we put the evaluation scores up in public in the room with all three suppliers in the room, as well as supplier A supplier B supplier C and each supplier, they knew who they were, but they obviously didn’t know who the other ones were, and so they had a good idea already on day one where they ranked in the evaluation process, and that’s a real powerful component, I think of the LP process as well. I don’t know if you normally would do this, but we did take the suppliers out for a beer as well that day just to make sure that they were comfortable enough with the process. You know, because it was a bit, was a big change for us, but it was.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah, it was a little bit better than space for us, but it was more the thought that counts, I guess and making sure that, and suppliers, were comfortable with the process as well and were able to give us some feedback on what was going well and what wasn’t going well, because it is again that interactive process that is it’s important to listen to the supplier base as well. So that was all good Day two, It was pretty obvious after day one that one out of the three was never ever going to be able to make up the difference and so we had a conversation with them in the morning of day two and suggested that it was better that they would step out of the process. There was no point for them to stay and so whilst disappointed, they were grateful that that opportunity was there so that we didn’t waste their time, which again I think is quite a good part of the process that you can utilise which you couldn’t normally do probably. And then one of the really good things that Ross helped us with on day two at the start was actually really challenging our canvas and challenging what we thought we needed. And Ross had some really, really good questions to the to the two remaining suppliers around challenging that, and coming up with some ideas around well, actually what is it that DCC needs and so really, really good exercise. Again, one of those things that you would never be able to do in a traditional paper based procurement exercise. So that was really good. More presentations and then we did a final evaluation session. At the at at. That point and make the decision to go with Portt. Went into the breakout rooms, told Portt that they were successful, told the other ones that they weren’t successful, but we’re able to provide instant feedback as well of why they weren’t successful. And then at the end of the day, went into a final negotiation process with board to finalise the terms and conditions of the contract and effectively signed the contract so in a bit more detail. The two days in a nutshell, so really intense 2 days, so I mean it’s maybe Silverio talk to a bit later about his experience, but really intense for the people at our end but really fulfilling and I think really important component for me was the relationship that we built with Silverio and his team during those two days and being able to go into an implementation process straight after on the basis of a really well developed relationship is really powerful.

Justin Bagust:

Yeah, I have to say what you’ve just described does sound really intense and I do love the fact that you’re measuring all the way through.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah and then it’s really important. Also, it was all from a process perspective. We made sure that it was all up to scrutiny and if it was audited, it was all good. So every time the scores were adjusted, it was recorded and stuff like that with comments. So you still need to make sure that you have your property in your process, but it’s really good to go and revisit your evaluation every time, because things do change, you hear new information and as part of the lean, agile procurement process, every time you give feedback to a supplier, you’re looking for that supplier to adjust and to think about “OK, well, I’ve heard this, so I need to do this and respond to this” And so to measure, to be able to measure that, you have to go and evaluate it every single time and credit to Portt, they were very good at doing that and listening to what we were saying and then adjusting. Seeing their presentations or what they were showing us to make sure that they did, they really showed us that they were listening to us as a customer.

Ross Darrah:

Also, Justin, just to add to that, Serge of alluded to it, but this is all done in a very safe environment, you know, and no two LAP events are the same. Depends on the makeup of the market. It depends on how comfortable our suppliers when you do it, sometimes you do lean agile procurement, you’ll have suppliers presenting in front of. Each other, right? But we were very conscious at the beginning and all the way through to make sure the supplies felt safe as much as the evaluation team and observe has felt safe as well, so it’s an important point that gets lost in in some of these events.

Justin Bagust:

Yeah, I have to say, it sounded like a very clean process you guys went through. So Silverio from your perspective, having never gone through an LAP process before, how do you find it?

Silverio Governo:

Kia ora Justin. Yeah, look really, really interesting listening to Serge and Ross and recapping a lot of it and I think I had a little bit of cold sweat coming down my forehead with a couple just reminiscing on a couple of the, a couple of the thoughts that I had, I think it might be worth if I if and I’ll try not to take too much time, I think it’s really, to share my perspective, not just for any suppliers that are on today’s session, but also to try and give my opinion of what went well. Because undoubtedly I think that the reason that this was such a great process was not just because there was someone who knew what they wanted. As a supplier that arrived on the day and spent two great days and the contract was signed, there were a lot of parts in the middle which were outside of the suppliers control, which I believe had to be in place and I’ll run through those and I’ll try and be assisting as possible. So I’ll start with the first one, which was we received the documentation and it tells us that there is this process, and I had never heard of this process, and the first thing that comes to mind is it was mind blowing. I was like, no chance in hell. First instinct, OK, who do I know in the industry who can tell me what LAP is? Who can? And that was probably the worst mistake I did because overload of scary information about suppliers in a room and talking over each other and you know. Like anything, if you jump on the Internet and try to find an answer, it can be a minefield of information. So I hadn’t met Ross at the time. I wish I had, but I was fortunate enough to know a couple of other people in the industry who gave me a slight perspective. It still didn’t relax me too much because I was still feeling very uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. If you want to help a particular customer and that’s the process that they’re going to run with, we had to do it. When we, or just before we got to day one, one of the key benefits that I think as Serge mentioned this, that appeased us a little bit because it’s typical, right? You’re a supplier. You think you know about your the things that are important for you. You’re quite protective about your IP. If we’re all going to be in a room, 3 suppliers, who’s going to see what we have to, you know, all the secret? Sauce and. So there’s a there’s a risk that you that you overthink that a little bit, right. But actually the rationale behind it is that if you think of the typical procurement process, you’ve got these many files of documents to go through every single business user siloed in their office, behind their desk, reviewing this, they all have a spreadsheet to fill out, which they do over a course of a week or two. During the first day they spend a few days, Section 1, then Section 2 because they never have time to do it, their minds not really in it. Then what happens? The salesperson comes in with the pre-sales person and they do a demo online or they come in person and they tell you. How great everything is and what inevitably happens is the customers having to make decisions purely based on those scenarios. What was really interesting was with the LAP process, you really can’t. You really have a moment where you bring it down to the bare basics, which is people are buying from people. And this project, yes, it’s for a piece of technology, but actually to get every single key stakeholder in a room for two days. Everyone from the supplier side who is relevant not just for the sale of this, not just for the contract piece, but actually, for what this project will look like in the future, I think was one of the key aspects that really brought it home for me as to why LAP is something that I’m surprised I haven’t come across before. So all the sort of nervousness from beforehand, it was relieved with a little bit of a summary before day one that the Council gave us before day one. Look, you’ve probably read all these scary stories. We’ve actually made a decision to have segregation and to have vendors present certain parts of their solution to addressing our problems in private. And all of a sudden, I think for everyone in the room, all three suppliers, the guard came down a little bit and you start to get to learn a little bit more about them as people. So that was a really strong aspect from day one. And then again another supplier point of view, I think you don’t really get an opportunity to talk and to ask questions in a traditional RFP process through all stakeholders. And it’s natural you can’t get in a typical procurement process, you get your 45 minutes or your one hour to come and present and it’s all time locked and you’re under strict limits. That still exists. To some extent in the LAP process but as far as talking to the stakeholders and asking these questions, it might be that you hear a string of conversation that brings one thought into your mind and you approach a stakeholder and ask a little bit more about that particular point and it’s not until three hours later you hear something else that sort of brings those “To get to, to get to”. So I think, overall, from a supplier point of view, very apprehensive at the start. The guard came down a little bit throughout the course of the two days, but the big thing for me overall from a supplier point of view is typical procurement process, I would say historically 80% of the talking is done by the salesperson and pre sales. 20% by anybody else you bring to your meeting, your demo, or shortlisting demo in this process. And I think you saw one of my colleagues there on the slide beforehand, it was the. Reverse sales and pre-sales did about 20% of the talking and it was actually the people and the project. People, the management, they were the ones doing a lot more of the talking and I think it really brought home how again, let’s not forget we’re buying a piece of technology, but people are buying. From people, not councils, buying from a software company. So overall I know if the next one might not be as perfect, but overall a really great process and I’m really pleased that we’ve that we’ve gone through it.

Justin Bagust:

Thanks for that. It sounds like a thoroughly engaged process. I do like the fact that you’ve got all the stakeholders, well, engaged and getting you across your ideas.

Silverio Governo:

That was one quick thing. Sorry. Just two more minutes to just put a couple more points. I think the success, no matter even if you’ve got the right three vendors with the right mentality and approach for this exercise they might come down on the day, but you cannot and must not take away from some of the points that Ross put out. Especially Serge mentioned earlier about getting the right sponsorship and the right stakeholders and everybody in the room. So credit to certain the team not only for shortlisting 3 great suppliers that you know provided a really open strong options for Council, but actually internally they really built and provided as Ross used that term that safe. That was really cohesive for a really good process and strong decision making at the end.

Justin Bagust:

So looking at your internal stakeholders, what were the lessons and feedback that you got from them? And I’ll ask Serge.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah, no, look, overall really positive. Like Silverio said that we had everybody in the room and it was a cohesive team and everybody was really impressed and they were excited to be part of it up front as well with something new and they so that that helped I guess, but no, it was really good. Because one of the key pieces of feedback actually that we got was that it was almost not enough time. It sounds really strange because it was two really intense days, but we were still sort of certain in certain parts and we were still rushing a wee bit to get through the information that we were looking for and be agile enough to have those meaningful conversations with each other during breaks, et cetera and stuff. So that was one of the one of the pieces of feedback that we’ve taken on board for the next one that we’re going to do that we’ll talk about in a minute was we could have done with a bit more time. But overall, really positive and people are really quite open now to using that. Again if the right opportunity comes up and that that’s the key part, we will use it again, but only if it’s the right project.

Silverio Governo:

Yeah, I definitely thought there wasn’t a lot of time. But there was. That’s the purpose of putting the supplier ecosystem through that particular process and that adaptability I think comes in and play really well right in a typical procurement process. You’ve got a week to get ready for your one hour presentation in one of these environments you come in and you’re going down one path, but Ross again, because on day two you brought everyone around the table revisited what the thoughts were all of a sudden something changes and as a supplier, you need to think on your feet and actually, that’s the nature of a project that this you need to understand how both parts. We’ll work with each other and react to something changing at the last minute, so that was a yeah, really, really critical and enjoyable part.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah. So we did. We did have a fixed agenda, but that changed all the time I mean it was really, really agile, yeah.

Justin Bagust:

Yeah, it does sound that way. It’s not saying look with the intensity that you’ve been talking about, have you found that’s had an impact on your relationships internally with, yeah, those stakeholders?

Serge Kolman:

Yes, I’ll go again. I think I alluded to it before, but I think getting into the implementation after we signed the contract, especially the people that were there for the day have been super, super supportive around the implementation process as well because they’ve been part of that process, part of the solution and that’s really helped. Thing is, some of those people are really key to making sure that this becomes a success. I think again, I’ll refer back to the relationship with the supplier has definitely helped us. Again, there is that level of trust already that we don’t have to establish as we move into contract delivery. That’s really helped you know. I’ll tell you, Justin, I’ve awarded many, many contacts, but I’ve never been hugged by a supplier at the end of it, when I told him that he won the contract. But Silverio did that for me. So that tells you something.

Justin Bagust:

That’s pretty awesome.

Silverio Governo:

I was. I was wondering. If you’d mentioned that.

Serge Kolman:

I had to mention it sooner or later. I had to mention it.

Justin Bagust:

Can we perhaps expect a hug if we get Silverio Governo as a contractor?

Serge Kolman:

Who knows?

Justin Bagust:

In terms of quicker procurement, is that, is that something you expect moving forward that’s really going to improve that speed to delivery?

Serge Kolman:

Yes, but I have to premise that with the right project definitely. But I’ve I also, I do have to mention I think that yes, the process is quicker, it’s true. But don’t forget there is an amount of planning that you need to put into making sure that these processes are successful. So where some of your time is spent, possibly at the end of the process with the lean agile procurement process, you do need to spend more time at the start to make sure that you’re ready and that you’ve got everything lined up and you get your user stories and you’ve got your canvas properly developed. There is still a certain amount of time that you need to put into it to make sure you get the right outcome.

Justin Bagust:

So if you had your time again is anything you’d do differently?

Serge Kolman:

Ah yes. And we are, so this project is for contract management and project management so at the time when we did the shortlisting, so we did do an open ROI process through guests to make sure that we comply with our policy and doing open tenders et cetera. And so we left the option open to go. For a supplier that could do both or breaking it up into contract management and project management. Based on the responses to the ROI, we decided to break up into contract management first, then project management. So we are about to do a lean agile process for project management in two weeks time. And So what we’re doing differently there just to make sure that we have enough time is actually the, the first part of day one where we did the briefing, talking about DCC, we talk about the canvas. We’ve actually done that yesterday as a separate exercise to make sure that we could give the suppliers a little bit of extra time to understand what our problems are around project management and why we need that project management software and to get them better prepared to come into the two days to really present their solution. So that’s the slight tweak that we’ve made to the process based on what we learned through our contract management LAP process.

Justin Bagust:

I’ll just mention out to our viewers here if you have a question, do feel free to throw through because we’re gonna about to enter into that question and answer time. So I’ll take the first question that we’ve got here and throw. It out, do you? You know which other councils are adopting a lean, agile procurement? And any other councils doing this?

Serge Kolman:

You want to take that one Ross?

Ross Darrah:

Serge Kolman probably if you can answer that I’m just, there’s probably, people have gathered. I’m actually sitting in the club and…

Serge Kolman:

Yeah, sorry, no problem. No problem. No, Justin, there definitely is. So I talked about the Auckland Council, for example. So Auckland have done a number of lean agile processes and. And I think lean agile procurement is a framework that we are starting to see and so people adjusted as they see fit, but they’ve done a number of lean agile procurement processes, Watercare have done it. We have had conversations with Emby who are about to embark on a lean agile process. This week we had some observers in our supplier briefing that we did for project management yesterday from other Councils that are looking to adopt it. So I think you will, you will see that an increased use of lean agile procurement process is coming.

Justin Bagust:

Had a question from Lynn Moore and she has asked who provides training for LAP.

Serge Kolman:

Well, there is a good person to speak to.

Ross Darrah:

I’ll let you do the ad for that Serge.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah. As we as wee plug for you, but we I think pass up the ASA they provide training as well. So yeah have a look online, there’s a there’s a number of providers that do it. I don’t know if you want you head to?

Silverio Governo:

Now I really I think Ross and his practise are incredibly strong and they’ve obviously given you a really great experience and as you said, you know happy to share it with any of the viewers who want to get in touch, happy to share any other thoughts. But yeah, Ross is a great fresh stop if you’ve never engaged with anybody beforehand.

Justin Bagust:

Have another question from Paul Hollis. Does lean agile procurement extend to the management stage of the procurement process? If so, what does this look like during the implementation stage?

Serge Kolman:

Good question. As far as we are concerned, I would say yes. So we are using an Angel implementation methodology for the implementation of the Portt solution. So elements of the agile procurement process I guess are being are flowing through into our implementations less management. Component of the process as well. So yes, I would say that there are elements that that you could use there.

Justin Bagust:

I’ll do a quick shout out to Ross here with a few people saying they’ve worked with you before and you’re a good fella. Another question, so are these slides or information that that are there are slides of information that we can share? I can answer that one, actually. Yes, the slides and this video will be available for viewing outside of this webinar. So one question that comes to mind is you know what types of projects would be suitable for this type of mythology?

Silverio Governo

That’s a big question. That’s a big question.

Ross Darrah:

It just comes back to that definition of what complex is, which is where you don’t know what it actually looks like. You just know you want to set an outcome. So ask Serge to talk about in the canvas the. The centre part, which as they call true north, that’s where you’re trying to find the strategic objective or what you’re looking to achieve. The beauty of the LAP processes suppliers get to input into that strategic sectors. The move the North Star to true north. So you’re getting actually feedback from the market to help with that, but it’s weird and you know the objective, but you don’t know quite how to get there and you’re using the suppliers experience. Thanks Justin.

Silverio Governo:

Justin, if I can just add one piece, I think. If someone’s embarking on an LAP programme of work. Definitely, absolutely. Pick the right project or pick the project that you think might be right for it. But don’t take your own word for it. Seek some advice. Seek some third party advice. And again, I can’t reemphasize just how well I believe this project ran. Predominantly because of the work that Serge and the team did in getting the right people in the room. Setting up the right environment, which actually had nothing to do with the specific project. It had to do with everything else around it, which I think is a really key set of components to get right as well.

Justin Bagust:

Really important to get that prep right. Yeah. Other questions have come through, one from James. How did your stakeholders feel being involved in an LAP process, say compared to the previous experience with the traditional RFP assessment process?

Serge Kolman:

Yeah. All the feedback was predominantly positive and I think again it comes back to that to being in the room, having those conversations with suppliers, being part of the solution, I suppose, and the ability to actually drill down on some of the questions that they might have. Possibly don’t have in a normal evaluation process. Pretty sterile process, right? You read a response, you scored it and that’s about it, but here you actually interact with people and based on that you have a much better understanding of what it is that you’re actually evaluating. So I think that indication is has been really good and was really positive for our stakeholders that were part of that. Process and I know that my General Manager was there for two days and he was, he said. Yeah, we definitely need to do this again at the end of the day too, because he really saw the value as well of the process and how it went. So I think overall really, really positive, but again, it’s about making sure they’re involved from the start, understand what you’re doing and why we’re doing it that way, get them a little bit of training around modelling and job actually, so that they don’t go in blind, it’s import. Want to make sure that they understand the process before they come into those sessions? I think, but if you do that and you take them along for that journey, you’ll get very, very heavy stakeholders.

Justin Bagust:

You’ve almost, I think you’ve almost answered by this question, but I’ll answer it in case if something Peter was after specifically. Can you go straight into an LAP process or should you start by introducing some elements during a more traditional procurement to get them used to the concept?

Serge Kolman:

Sort of answered I think, but I think I’m somebody that likes to engage with the stakeholders and bring them along. So I always would say, you know, engage with them early. The earlier you engage, the more they’ll be engaged and the better they understand the outcomes that you’re trying to achieve. Basic understanding of how the process is going to work I think will help. For them as well to better understand what you’re trying to achieve. It’s ultimately about achieving a joint objective and you need to do it together.

Ross Darrah:

And the other important point Serge is that this is an option that should be considered as part of your procurement planning process.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

Ross Darrah:

So firstly, you’ve got to understand the business requirements first and then as you’re putting your sourcing strategy and procurement plan together, this is an option because sooner at that point not later on through the process.

Serge Kolman:

Totally agree and that’s why you know for what I mentioned before that for us, it’s another tool in the toolbox to consider how we’re going to procure something.

Justin Bagust:

Thanks. What’s next for Dunedin City Council? What’s in your near future?

Serge Kolman:

So we, like I said, we’re doing the project management one, but we’ve also got some other projects coming up, I think complex enough to use a lean agile procurement for and one is actually in the engineering side and one is in the in the more creative side of our economic development component of DCC. So we’re looking at gearing up to do some more lean agile procurement processes in in quite different areas of DCC.

Justin Bagust:

So in terms of that, the project management part, what’s the Portt philosophy around the agile process?

Silverio Governo:

All pretty straightforward. I think the key thing is not to reinvent the wheel. I’d say that looking at yourself in the mirror and asking am I ready for an LAP process or am I ready for an agile methodology project are probably just very similar questions. And they’ll probably be people in the room swearing and cursing and about an agile programme of work looks pretty straightforward. It’s fair to say that it’s always suited for a little bit more because of the modular aspect of our platform and the fact that with an out-of-the-box solution or set of modules, I should say that you can pick and choose which one you want to use and configure it as opposed to needing to go and develop it. It just suits a really nice iterative approach to the implementation with the proper workshops etcetera. And so it just it’s really geared toward that, so realistically, our approach is like any other proper agile programme of work. And so for this particular LAP process it actually worked quite well that we had people experienced in the agile space, but also had never, ever just like you Justin, that obviously heard about Agile. They’ve worked and lean agile, but only from a project management point of view, never from. A procurement process point of view.

Justin Bagust:

I’ve had one further question coming from John. You mentioned there was a framework. Is this something available and if? So where would you find it?

Ross Darrah:

If you Google Mirko Kleiner you’ll find on the Internet there’s a whole lot of material here is available. That’s MIRKO Space KLEINER top guy. We were fortunate enough to have him here in New Zealand for a couple of training sessions. I think he ran and also presented at. The Sips conference up in Auckland. So it was it was really great meeting him in particular, after I had just gone through that process a couple of months earlier with the search and the and the and the team, it was quite a yeah, it was. It was really nice. I basically blamed him for everything.

Justin Bagust:

Well, unless there is any other further questions from our audience that will miss is anything else you guys would? Like to add in in closing.

Silverio Governo:

Now from my from my point of view, if you’ve got any questions on what it was like from a supplier point of view that I haven’t addressed today, really, really happy to clarify, give it our point of view perspective, what went right, what went wrong, really happy to share that with anyone who’s on the webinar today. Hit me up on LinkedIn. You won’t find many. Wellington based Silverio Governo’s, so you know where to find me.

Serge Kolman:

Yeah, I think I’ll add to that as well. Same for me, if anybody wants to get a bit more detail, ask more questions, you’ll find me in DCC on LinkedIn and there’s not many Serge Kolman’s on LinkedIn, so you’ll find me there.

Ross Darrah:

And I think just my last word, Justin, as that based on the definition of insanity, where people are trying to do the same things as they did yesterday and expecting a different result, this is a solution to do something different to get that different result. So be brave and try it. It does. It does work.

Justin Bagust:

I have to say from everything you guys have said, it certainly makes a lot of sense. In my eyes, and I would recommend that people take a jump. Give it a go from your experiences. I think everyone would be pleasantly surprised or get the exact results that they expect, which is a success so. Yeah. Thank you very much again for your time, fellas.

Serge Kolman:

Thank you.

Silverio Governo:

Thank you for the invite.