At this year’s NASPO Annual Conference in Chicago, one theme cut through every conversation: public procurement is stepping beyond compliance and into performance leadership.
Two states — Florida and Massachusetts — shared groundbreaking initiatives with a common thread: a bold, scalable approach to Vendor Performance Management (VPM), combining human engagement with modern performance data, using technology like Procurated’s Canary. Both of these initiatives were finalists for the George Cronin Award for Procurement Excellence, NASPO’s highest innovation honor.
For decades, procurement teams have excelled at competitive solicitations and compliance. But once the ink dried, few had the capacity to track how suppliers were actually performing. Both Florida and Massachusetts decided that wasn’t good enough. And both proved that with the right approach and the right tools, even small teams can drive major performance gains.
The Challenge Every State Faces
Most procurement leaders know the problem: too many vendors, too few staff, and too little proactive oversight. Florida’s Terri Classon, who leads a seven-person contract management team at the Department of Management Services (DMS), put it bluntly:
“We were only meeting with about one percent of our vendors each year, maybe five to ten out of more than a thousand. That meant we were missing early warning signs and spending too much time reacting.”
Massachusetts’ Operational Services Division (OSD) faced the same math. With more than 1,200 suppliers and only nine contract managers, meeting everyone would have taken more than 30 years. Both states wanted stronger relationships, earlier insight into risk, and the ability to help vendors improve, but couldn’t scale with traditional one-on-one meetings.
Florida: From Reactive to Strategic Vendor Performance Management
Florida decided to flip the script and build a scalable, structured program for vendor performance.
Terri’s team created a Strategic Supplier Engagement Model: onboarding and kickoff meetings to set expectations, business review meetings (BRMs) — often in groups — site visits, supplier feedback, and performance dashboards powered by Canary.
“These reviews don’t just keep vendors accountable,” Terri said. “They’ve helped our team become subject matter experts and have given vendors the transparency they crave.”
Growth in Engagement
Florida understood that meeting directly with vendors would allow them to build meaningful relationships and improve their working relationships. But without adding scores of new contract managers, how could they dramatically increase the number of business reviews with vendors? One key solution was to meet as a group with vendors on a contract, allowing them to engage at scale. The introduction of this new method led to an explosion in BRMs:
The DMS team met with more and more vendors every quarter, sharing that they were actively tracking performance. The team was able to see each vendor’s performance through Canary’s intuitive dashboards, on demand, and they’d be alerted to performance issues in real time. Knowing that their contract managers were watching and would hold them accountable, the vendors’ performance quickly improved. In fact, large agencies saw performance scores improve by as much as 42% compared to the previous year.
Measurable Performance Gains
Why It Matters
Better vendor scores aren’t just paperwork. They reflect tangible improvements for the lives of citizens. When the Department of Corrections improves vendor performance by 42%, facilities run more smoothly and safely. When the Department of Children & Families sees a 24% jump, it means services for vulnerable families have become more reliable. Juvenile Justice and Health Care Administration saw similar improvements.
Vendor Performance Management isn’t about counting meetings. It’s about enabling agencies to function at a higher level and ultimately deliver better service to the public.
Terri’s team has also seen internal benefits. Contract managers now do meaningful, insight-driven work and have become industry experts. “We’ve transformed the role, and today we have no vacancies,” Terri noted.
Massachusetts: Scaling Smartly and Iterating Quickly with Group Business Reviews
Massachusetts took inspiration from Florida but tailored the approach for its nine-person team. They began by clarifying their purpose: listening to vendors, sharing performance data, and improving contracts. Early questions arose. How can we share performance without exposing competitors? Would vendors speak openly in a group? Their solution was anonymized benchmarking: each supplier received a unique identifier before sessions, so they could see their performance compared to peers without knowing who those peers were.
The rollout was deliberate. OSD communicated early with vendors, used a vendor intake form to gather topics suppliers wanted to discuss, created standardized presentation templates, and partnered with other state teams such as Data Analytics and Climate & Sustainability to add value. And, with only nine contract managers, they leaned heavily on Canary for performance dashboards and to generate asynchronous business review reports when live meetings weren’t possible.
Their first group review was a turning point. Vendors arrived cautious but soon began sharing openly.
Over the next 18 months, OSD kept refining: smaller groups (10 instead of 15), better prep automation, agency buyers in the room, and continuous feedback loops. Asynchronous reviews expanded reach without draining staff time.
With each successive business review, OSD gained market intelligence on tariffs, sustainable purchasing, EV adoption, pricing trends, and supply chain resilience. Procurement shifted from compliance to strategic insight. Vendors soon sent loves notes to their contract managing, praising the new approach:
“Great informative session… Overall incredible BR, keep doing what you are doing.”
“I loved the open dialogue and discussion! — it felt collaborative and informative.”
“True partnerships come from collaboration.”
Why Vendor Performance Management is the Future
Awarding a contract is no longer enough. If suppliers underperform, agencies — and citizens — pay the price.
Florida and Massachusetts show that Vendor Performance Management (VPM), done at scale and powered by reliable, transparent performance data, can lift service delivery across agencies, catch issues before they become crises, turn contract managers into strategic experts, and arm procurement with real-time market intelligence.
The data backbone matters. Without timely, trusted insight, engagement becomes anecdotal and impossible to scale. Tools like Canary give small teams the ability to gather buyer feedback across agencies, surface risk trends, produce clear dashboards, and create asynchronous review reports that keep suppliers informed without overwhelming staff.
That’s how Florida (seven contract managers) and Massachusetts (nine) now manage and improve performance across more than a thousand suppliers.
How to Start
If your vendor management is still reactive, you can follow a simple playbook:
- Pilot: Choose a handful of critical suppliers and hold structured, data-informed reviews.
- Communicate: Tell vendors why the process is changing and how you’ll use the data.
- Standardize: Use templates and clear agendas to save time.
- Scale: Add asynchronous reports when live meetings aren’t feasible.
- Refine: Adjust group size, automate prep, gather feedback, and evolve.
Start before everything is perfect. Florida and Massachusetts didn’t wait for extra staff. They started, learned, and improved.
The Bigger Picture
Budgets are tight. Supply chains are volatile. Citizens expect more from government. Procurement can’t stop at awarding contracts; we must ensure suppliers deliver.
Florida and Massachusetts didn’t innovate to win awards. They did it to solve real problems and create measurable impact, and in doing so, they’ve shown a future where Vendor Performance Management is core to procurement’s mission.
When you combine human engagement with transparent performance data from platforms like Canary, suppliers step up, agencies succeed, and citizens get better services.
For procurement leaders asking “so what,” this is the answer: Collaborative, data driven Vendor Performance Management turns procurement from a cost center into a performance engine for government.