Recently, leading cooperatives have recognized the need to create a one-stop-shop transactional marketplace for their members. Cooperatives like Sourcewell, E&I, MHEC, AEPA, and TIPS have announced or implemented marketplaces to help their members reduce price discovery, order processing and invoicing times. When you reduce costs within a government organization or institution, funds are freed up for other mission-specific uses. This means that constituents win, too. Cooperatives also realize benefits, with access to online spend reporting and tighter integrations with members topping the list.
How are cooperative agreements established? Well, the cooperative or lead agency runs a formal competitive process, following procurement codes, state and local statutes to determine which vendors qualify to sell specific goods and services under the agreement. A trusted cooperative contract eliminates the time and cost associated with your agency gathering requirements, creating the RFP, reviewing multiple bidders, and making an award. With cooperative purchasing, both the buyer and seller benefit from a dramatically shortened and less costly sales cycle.
The pandemic emphasized a vital lesson; all public sector organizations must digitize. This is especially true for cooperatives. The ones that fail to embrace a “digital-first” approach to improving their value proposition are at risk of being left behind and losing competitiveness. Digitalization is raising the stakes, so cooperatives have a growing incentive to find new ways to enhance member experience.
