You know this better than anyone: procurement teams are under intense pressure today. With big budget challenges, worries about funding, and enrollment declines, every dollar spent is under review. And even though you’re probably doing more with less, the work you do may be under more scrutiny than ever before.
The solution? Finding efficiencies at every step of the procurement process to simplify your workflow and let you take on a bigger role in helping solve budget challenges. To do so, colleges and universities are increasingly turning to procurement automation in education and supplier enablement platforms as solutions, including AI and analytics to find greater savings. In fact, a 2025 Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) Survey from Deloitte reported that 67% of procurement leaders identified AI and analytics as core to their digital strategy.
You’ll save money with procurement automation, but it’s about more than just reducing costs. Automation paves the way for transparency, enforcing compliance, and reducing the manual workloads that slow you down. Modern systems can automate much of the procurement pipeline and create an audit-ready flow to ensure accountability and free up your team.
You can also better manage today’s complex web of suppliers.
You might have hundreds (or thousands) of suppliers in your system. Automation helps you simplify supplier management, and the right platform can integrate all your processes and data into one system, eliminating the need to rely on that long list of spreadsheets and files you’ve been maintaining until now.
Automation can help you streamline procurement and finance operations. For example:
How much can you really automate? A 2025 analysis from Veridion suggests that between 50% and 80% of current procurement workflows can be automated, eliminated, or shifted to self-service models. Think about how much difference that would make in your procurement!
If you’re not incorporating a supplier enablement platform, you’re missing a big piece of automation that can save you time. The benefits? You get faster onboarding, built-in compliance checks, and significant risk reduction with:
There is an upfront cost to automation. How much will depend on the level of automation you choose and how deep your integration goes. But the ROI is considerable. It’s not uncommon for organizations to see a 10–15% reduction in administrative costs which in today’s economic climate in higher ed, is a substantial benefit.
You also save time by automating much of the documentation process you’ll need for internal or external audits.
Procurement automation in education starts by digitizing your workflow. But it goes beyond that. It’s really a way to transform procurement and free up your time to focus on strategy rather than manual tasks that don’t add significant value.
With automation, you can focus on areas that create broad value, like strategic sourcing, developing supplier relationships, and finding innovative solutions. It gives you time to make sure your purchase decisions align with institutional goals like supplier diversity, localism, and sustainability.
Along the way, you get better data and easier access to data, streamlining your job even further. Automation helps you reduce the manual workload and focus on areas that make a real difference.
With growing budget constraints and an urgency to increase savings and demonstrate fiscal responsibility, automation is a key step in improving efficiency and helping you focus on what really matters.
E&I Cooperative Services helps educational institutions access competitively solicited, cooperative contracts and procurement solutions. That includes a no-cost eProcurement platform, other technologies and services, and consultants that can help you simplify automation and supplier management.
Explore hundreds of cooperative agreements and find new ways to save time and money. You can also contact one of our education procurement experts by calling 1.877.MYEANDI.