Work Smarter, Not Harder: New Tactics for Collaboration in the Digital Age

Rondell Schroeder, Purchasing Specialist with Mt. San Antonio College, and Lourdes Coss, former CPO for the City of Houston & Cook County shared their experience utilizing cooperative procurement to work smarter, not harder at CAPPO 2022. Watch the full conversation here.

Public procurement has always had a strong spirit of collaboration. However, this collaborative spirit isn’t just an energy among procurement professionals; it can be a practical tactic for doing more with less. While at CAPPO, Lourdes and Rondell shared how collaboration, and cooperative procurement in particular, can help public procurement professionals save time, delight end users, and drive agency goals forward.

Cooperative procurement is not a new strategy, it’s been around for many years and recently began to increase in popularity. Rondell shared how modern tech tools like CoProcure have helped her maximize the value of this strategy. CoProcure helps Rondell find cooperative and piggybackable contracts from hundreds of sources all in one place, rather than spending hours combing through different cooperative websites. Using CoProcure to find cooperative contracts creates more options for her agency and end users, and helps her expedite the purchasing process.

Using cooperative contracts to save time was a core theme of the conversation. Lourdes recounted how, during her time at Cook County, she discovered that her team was spending 80% of their time on 20% of their spend. By using cooperative contracts, they were able to leverage the work of other public entities on procurements like commodities, allowing her team to focus their time and energy on more specialized procurements.

Beyond time savings, using and creating cooperative contracts can be a powerful strategy for driving agency goals forward. For example, many agencies are implementing equity goals for working with more small and diverse businesses. While working with Cook County Courts, Lourdes’s team awarded a contract to a minority business and included cooperative language. Other entities across the county were able to leverage this contract, allowing them to save time, meet equity goals, and ultimately drive economic development but supporting a local minority business.

If you’re interested in exploring more tactics that utilize cooperative procurement to work smart, not harder, check out the worksheet we shared at the conference. Here you’ll find new tactics to consider and resources to help you get started. If you already leverage cooperative contracts, get started with CoProcure today. There is no implementation needed, no sign-in required, you can simply start searching or schedule a personalized demo for a more in-depth training and a chance to meet the team.