How to do Cooperative Purchasing Better

Adjust your strategy for the modern world

The world of public procurement is vast and complex. Procurement teams have a lot on their plates between finding and securing goods and services, searching multiple locations for the best value, and adhering to federal and local regulations. The pitfalls are numerous, and the roadblocks frustrating.

Procurement specialists must consider their budget, speed, internal stakeholders’ needs, and more. They must find and evaluate vendors, work through contract details, and maintain relationships. It can be a demanding and time-consuming job.

The procurement process can be complex. Cooperative purchasing aims to simplify the process and has emerged as a leading method in recent years. When done correctly, cooperative procurement can offset many of the challenges procurement teams face.

Five Cooperative Purchasing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Cooperative purchasing is a great way to improve procurement strategy, but like any process with multiple steps and different organizations involved, there are some common pitfalls. Let's look at the top five and how to mitigate them.

1. You’re not getting a competitive price

Cooperative purchasing creates economies of scale which allow buyers to get better pricing, but that doesn’t mean cooperative contracts are offering the best pricing in every instance. Rates are often negotiated based on purchasing volumes that may differ from your agency’s needs and might not be as low as a supplier is willing to go.

Solution:

Reach out to suppliers, especially if there are multiple available, and do a “bake-off” or compare them against each other. A little competition is healthy and generally results in you getting a better price from a willing supplier.

2. Lack of clarity around expectations

Working with multiple partners in a cooperative contract can lead to a variance in expectations held by each party. If the main drivers behind a cooperative contract are radically different between agencies and that isn’t communicated ahead of time, it can lead to problems down the road.

Solution:

It’s important to outline expectations ahead of time. There’s a give and take and it requires clarity to alleviate issues. Be vocal about your requirements but willing to accept if a supplier can’t meet your expectations and a contract isn’t a viable option for your agency.

3. Communication problems

As a result of manual/legacy processes and dated technology, open communication can quickly turn into a roadblock. Emailing, calling, and manually sharing documents often creates inefficiencies that hold up the process or derail it altogether.

Solution:

Modern technology like CompareCoOps  improves communication in cooperative purchasing. While communication and processes used to be siloed by disparate systems, we offer a platform that houses each participant throughout each step of the process, allowing them to interact in one space while guiding them through the process. Silos are removed and everyone is updated and informed at a moment’s notice.

4. There’s a lack of trust

Unfortunately, trust has been an obstacle since cooperative contracts were first put into practice. They’re still relatively new. Many procurement specialists and their legal teams are still learning the intricacies of the cooperative procurement process. It's more a lack of familiarity than anything concrete.

Solution:

As cooperative purchasing rises in popularity, more vendors are signing on at local levels. Joining a platform like CompareCoOps levels the playing field for vendors. When agencies create a request in our system, suppliers all have an equal opportunity to respond and win the business. It’s important that platforms like CompareCoOps remain agnostic for this very reason. Our comprehensive audit trail and reporting function also help build trust and transparency among users.

5. You’ve lost flexibility and control

While taking on a less active role in the creation and negotiation of a contract frees up your team’s time, it also often means ceding some control over specifics. It’s important to maintain as much flexibility and control as possible while remaining compliant and keeping your end-users happy.

Solution:

Plan ahead and gain a deep understanding of the contract details as they relate to your needs. When piggybacking, you’re subject to the lead agency’s negotiations. If they amend a contract down the road, those changes now apply to you as well. If you’re only planning on making a one-time purchase or the solicitation period is ending soon, you probably don’t need to worry about this. For longer-lasting contracts, reach out to vendors to negotiate a separate agreement.

For a more in-depth look at these pitfalls and their solutions, download this free whitepaper.

The CompareCoOps platform is designed to create a more efficient experience for agencies and suppliers. Alleviating these common pitfalls is at the forefront of our product strategy. As a result, CompareCoOps helps agencies all over the country increase value, savings, transparency, and compliance from their procurement strategies, all while gaining powerful insights to help them make improvements.

The “platform model” is a perfect match for cooperative purchasing. Keeping agencies, contracts, and suppliers in one place means no longer needing to send countless emails to suppliers, scour different websites or message boards for contracts, or keep up with everything via antiquated methods like spreadsheets.

You can easily identify which cooperative contract provides you with the most savings using our advanced wizard tool.

Ensuring compliance and transparency through our locked-down processes and a strong audit trail is also extremely simple. You can add all legal requirements, do your due diligence, and get exactly what you want at the best price while becoming a compliance master!

Finally, CompareCoOps offers reporting that goes far beyond simple spend analysis. You can see how buyers go to market for key categories, identify opportunities for efficiencies, and support a culture of continuous improvement in procurement.

If that sounds like something you could use, book a demo with CompareCoOps or learn more about the platform here.

CompareCoOps will be at CAPPO 2023 and looks forward to meeting you in person. Come visit us at our booth and find out more about our revolutionary platform!