Today I’m proud to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Bonfire and, with it, the incredible clients and team who have made our success possible. To mark the occasion, I’m hopping onto the blog to reflect on our journey — to think about how far we’ve come and where we’re headed.

Reflecting on the journey

When I joined Bonfire over 9 years ago, we were a small startup with a handful of clients. Coming from the vendor side, I knew our eProcurement platform had the potential to transform sourcing and purchasing in the public sector. But I could never have known just how successful Bonfire would be.

Before joining the team, I was a consulting engineer for a small firm and part of my job was submitting RFX responses to the public sector. That’s right, I was on the vendor side! The very last project I worked on really opened my eyes to the promise of eProcurement. It was a proposal for one of Canada’s largest hospitals — and it was a monstrosity. We were one of 30 consultants that responded, and our paperwork alone filled a banker’s box. Not only was it arduous to compile, but it also had to be stored under lock and key. I don’t envy the evaluators who had to manually sift through thousands of pages. It would be months before we got the results and by then we had turned down several opportunities to avoid overextending our team.

You can see why I immediately understood the value of Bonfire. I knew eProcurement would give vendors and public agencies the tools they needed — easy submissions, quick evaluations, instant award notifications, and transparent results — to build strong and lasting relationships.

Fast-forward 10 years and Bonfire’s eProcurement platform has streamlined the process for 451,506 global users (and counting), including buyers, vendors, and evaluators. Our clients have run 81,900 projects on Bonfire and vendors have uploaded nearly 150 million pages of proposal documents. In that time, we’ve never stopped evolving to respond to the changing landscape of public procurement.

Collaborating to find a way

Regardless of the curveballs we’ve been thrown over the years (yes, including a pandemic), our team and clients continue to evolve, innovate, and prove our value, again and again. If there’s one thing that’s true of both the Bonfire team and the public procurement professionals we work with, it’s that we always find a way.

Nearly 700 clients have collaborated with us over the last decade to help make Bonfire what it is today. We’ve co-created a purpose-built solution that rises to the needs of public sector procurement. But beyond that, we’ve also worked together to support the success of public procurement professionals everywhere. Whether through our Open Community Projects, Inside Public Procurement podcast, Strategic Sourcing blog, or virtual events and user meet-ups, we’re dedicated to building a community that promotes and celebrates excellence in public procurement.

Driving impact with eProcurement

As we enter our tenth year, we’re emerging out of a global pandemic truly ready for anything. Given the impact our solution has had during Covid-19 — connecting citizens to essential vaccines, PPE, cleaning supplies, and more — our mission and vision are truer than ever. The pandemic was an extreme challenge for procurement agencies, but it also brought procurement into focus. For once, everyone knew the procurement minister’s name! And the general public quickly came to witness the essential role procurement professionals play in keeping our communities safe, healthy, and functioning.

I always say that we’re lucky to work in the public procurement space because the delta between our day-to-day efforts and the impact they have is very small. We clearly see the positive difference our product makes in the world — from supplying healthcare workers with PPE to providing laptops for home-schooled children. Seeing that real-world impact keeps us motivated to continue supporting procurement teams for years to come.

What’s next?

When people ask me what the future holds for procurement, I think about what happens as more and more agencies digitize at scale. What happens is that procurement rises to be a value-add department within the agency. And procurement departments become guardians of the process — not just from a compliance point of view, but from a strategic point of view. Internal clients will want to engage procurement teams not only to ensure compliance, but also because they provide deep expertise on how to source the best products and services at the best value.

Bonfire eProcurement supports that strategic role for hundreds of public sector agencies that rely on us to manage their competitive bid processes. Looking to the next 10 years and beyond, we’ll continue to provide a platform to elevate procurement’s importance and enable strategic decision-making. I’m very proud of that legacy and I know Bonfire will continue to be a strong partner for many years to come.

Celebrating our clients

We wouldn’t be here without the clients who have made our success possible. So, to celebrate our 10-year anniversary, we’re launching a new awards ceremony. Bonfire’s Procurement Awards celebrates procurement professionals who excel, innovate, and showcase excellence in the eProcurement space. I encourage you to nominate someone who inspires you.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past 10 years. I look forward to working together to shape the future of public procurement.