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The procure-to-pay (P2P) process in higher education is complex. You need to balance cost efficiency, compliance, supplier diversity, and sustainability requirements. P2P has become especially challenging considering today’s budget constraints and price increases.
Cooperative sourcing for higher education offers a streamlined approach to procurement, helping procurement and finance teams stretch their dollars and streamline their systems for greater efficiency.
Here are seven of the key benefits of partnering with a cooperative sourcing organization.
By leveraging the collective purchasing power of multiple institutions, colleges and universities can get better pricing with suppliers, leading to substantial cost savings on goods and services.
Volume-based discounts, reduced administrative costs, and centralized contract management add up to significant savings which can help you meet your budget goals or allow you to invest in other areas.
You know how time-consuming and resource-intensive the procure-to-pay process can be. Cooperative sourcing simplifies your workflow by reducing the administrative burden and minimizing redundant efforts across institutions.
Thus, you can focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine transactions. By leveraging eProcurement platforms and data analytics, you can gain real-time insights into spending patterns, supplier performance, and contract utilization to help you further optimize your procurement strategies.
Higher education institutions have to meet a higher level of internal and external compliance measures, including strict regulatory standards. Cooperative purchasing agreements are vetted for compliance with federal, state, and industry regulations.
This significantly reduces your risk and gives you the confidence that your P2P process will meet audit requirements, helping overcome challenges such as:
Through cooperative sourcing, you gain access to a network of top-tier suppliers that meet quality and service standards. You can secure reliable partners and ensure consistency in product and service delivery.
Because of the volume these cooperative contracts represent, you can often find suppliers that may not respond to your individual RFPs. These are big sales for suppliers, so there is a greater incentive for suppliers to provide a high level of service to maintain their position.
Colleges and universities committed to supplier diversity often have challenges in finding small, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses in their networks. Sourcing cooperatives have procurement professionals that competitively source certified diverse suppliers to help you meet your goals.
With pre-negotiated contracts and established supplier relationships, the procurement process moves faster. This reduces the time spent on sourcing, contract negotiations, and approvals so you can get what you need more quickly.
Automated procurement systems further streamline the process by integrating purchase approvals, budget tracking, and supplier management on a centralized platform. Centralizing purchasing also helps reduce maverick spending across departments, which can add up quickly and undermine your efforts to control costs.
FYI: E&I Cooperative Services offers a no-cost e-procurement platform for members, including a P-card marketplace, that can enable you to bring up to 90% of your everyday purchasing under contract in one place. Purpose-built for education, you can maximize contract offerings and catalog options to ensure compliance with policies and mitigate risk.
An often-under-valued benefit of cooperative sourcing for higher education is collaboration with like-minded professionals. Their collective knowledge enables the sharing of best practices and proven strategies, helping foster continuous improvement.
Category experts at sourcing cooperatives develop in-depth relationships with suppliers and stay on top of emerging trends, helping uncover innovative solutions that you might otherwise miss.
As higher education continues to navigate financial and operational challenges, leveraging cooperative sourcing is more important than ever to meet your goals.
E&I Cooperative Services is the only member-owned nonprofit sourcing cooperative that focuses solely on the education sector. A team of procurement professionals and category experts work on behalf of 6,000 member institutions to craft cooperative agreements with lower costs and more favorable terms and conditions.
View hundreds of available cooperative contracts at E&I Cooperative Services or learn more about the benefits of membership. There is no cost to become a member and no minimum purchasing requirement.
