{"id":3579,"date":"2017-06-28T11:34:13","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T11:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/2017\/06\/28\/how-important-is-asking-about-prospective-supplier-personnel\/"},"modified":"2021-07-15T04:13:37","modified_gmt":"2021-07-15T08:13:37","slug":"is-inquiring-about-supplier-personnel-important-when-sourcing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/is-inquiring-about-supplier-personnel-important-when-sourcing\/","title":{"rendered":"How Important Is Asking About Prospective Supplier Personnel?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I accidentally ran across a 17-page sourcing case study from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n<p>This case study will likely be the subject of a number of posts on the NLPA Blog.\u00a0 There\u2019s a number of things that the County\u2019s\u00a0sourcing team did well in the sourcing project.\u00a0 And there are plenty of things that are downright questionable.<\/p>\n<p>In this first post, I\u2019ll point out one of the questionable things.<\/p>\n<p>In this project, the County was seeking to select three providers of\u00a0\u00a0care management\u00a0support to individuals age 60 and older \u2014 who are not Medicaid-eligible \u2014 so that they may continue living independently.\u00a0 The goal was to \u201cimprove the quality\u201d of what it calls its \u201cOptions Program.\u201d\u00a0 According to the case study, \u201cThe RFP asked respondents to address approximately 40 questions in a maximum of 30 pages.\u201d\u00a0 Further, the case study indicated that the RFP went through \u201c14 drafts and review by the Allegheny County Law Department. Reviewers submitted a total of 177 recommendations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The case study offered three examples of the questions asked:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What does your organization provide in services and programming to the community that is unique, innovative and progressive?<\/li>\n<li>What actions or changes would your organization need to make in its current structure or operations to execute the scope of work proposed in this RFP?<\/li>\n<li>Indicate some recent service innovations or improvements that grew out of your organization\u2019s participant and caregiver data collection and analysis.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The sourcing team \u2013 which seems to have included an extremely large number of stakeholders but an untold number of procurement professionals, if any \u2013 rated answers to the questions.\u00a0 Those ratings led to the short-listing of four suppliers (down from 23 that showed up at the pre-proposal conference).\u00a0 The County ended up selecting three providers \u2013 one incumbent and two newcomers.<\/p>\n<p>The case study goes on to state the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cThe announcement of winners unleashed an unusual combination of career rearrangements. Experienced care managers at three unsuccessful incumbent agencies found themselves in great demand at two incoming agencies that had written excellent proposals but had no aging care management staff. With the freedom to establish their own salary structures, [the two new suppliers] could compete to lure staff from prior providers. Moreover, even though\u00a0[the incumbent supplier]\u00a0had retained a contract, it was losing a portion of its former geographic service area. In an effort to provide continuity of care,\u00a0[the incumbent supplier]\u00a0gave up some of its best care managers so that they could join\u00a0[one of the new suppliers]\u00a0and continue to serve the same participants in their caseloads.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is where things began to get bizarre for me.\u00a0 The County selected two of its three successful bidders despite the fact that they had \u201cno aging care management staff.\u201d\u00a0 Fourteen drafts.\u00a0 One hundred seventy-seven recommendations.\u00a0 Forty questions.\u00a0 Yet, no one thought that successful suppliers should have employees to perform the contracted services before contract award?\u00a0 That, of all the criteria on which the bidders were rated, \u201cexperienced employees\u201d wasn\u2019t one of them?<\/p>\n<p>So, in a game that the case study calls \u201cmusical chairs for employees,\u201d the new suppliers simply acquired the same employees that were already performing the services for outgoing suppliers.\u00a0 Additionally, by not mentioning cost at all, it appears that cost may not have been considered in the decision \u2013 only the ratings of questions answered in proposals and in follow up interviews.\u00a0 Considering that this sourcing process took a whopping 16 months \u2013 hey, that\u2019s government procurement for ya \u2013 it really calls into question whether Allegheny County\u2019s approach was really the smart way to improve the quality of its Options Program.<\/p>\n<p>Stay tuned for more analysis of this interesting \u2013 and, in some ways, disturbing \u2013 sourcing case study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I accidentally ran across a 17-page sourcing case study from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v19.4 (Yoast SEO v19.13) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How Important Is Asking About Prospective Supplier Personnel? 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