Best Value Procurement

Best Value Procurement is a procurement system that considers factors such as quality and expertise and not just pricing, and that aims to achieve the best value for whatever is being procured. As such, a Best Value project in Bonfire is anonymized and can only have one evaluation group open at a time. Additionally, any attributes that can identify the vendor are hidden and the obscured vendor names are regenerated each time you release an evaluation group.

NOTE: If you are interested in strictly anonymizing vendor/supplier names for submissions, please view our page on Anonymous Submissions.

To enable the Best Value setting for your project, click on the Actions -> Edit Project button on your Details page and check the box next to the Best Value feature, found under the Configurations dropdown menu:

NOTE: To be able to select Best Value as the project level, it must be enabled for your entire portal first. If you don't see this option and wish to gain access to it, please contact us at support@gobonfire.com.

Best Value projects are tagged with a green identifying label:

Best Value will hide all Vendor metadata from view until you are ready to reveal it. This includes the date of the submission received, the number of pages, and also the filename uploaded by the Vendor. (Please note that this does NOT automatically hide any identifying information in the contents of the files itself.)

Anonymized vendor names will be replaced with a randomly generated alphanumeric code (this code will randomly regenerate every time you release an Evaluation Group). Other anonymized attributes will be completely hidden with asterisks (*). 

Here is an example of what the Submissions section for a Best Value project looks like:

As previously mentioned, document filenames will be anonymized as well:

Assuming you wish to hide all Vendor information from yourself as well as the Evaluators, you may want to inform Vendors to not provide any identifying details in their submission beyond registering for their account.

If you, however, wanted to be able to identify the Vendor (but hide from the Evaluators), you would want the Vendors to submit as per usual and to include identifying details on their documents.

The submissions would still be anonymized to the Evaluators however you could view their submission files to identify which Vendor the submission belongs to.

In the event that a Vendor uploads a document that reveals their identity or name, you can still amend the submission via Bonfire's Amend Submission feature.

To de-anonymize a Vendor submission and reveal all identifying attributes, click on the Actions button for the Vendor and select De-Anonymize:

NOTE: Once a submission is de-anonymized, this cannot be undone. 

Once your Reviewers have finished inputting their scores and the evaluation period is complete, you can mark the project as completed by going to Details -> Actions -> Mark as Completed:

Once the project has been Marked as Completed, you can click on Actions -> De-Anonymize to reveal vendor names and any identifying information associated with their submissions: