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News

EqualLevel Is Featured in Government Procurement Magazine

June 13, 2023August 24, 2023

EqualLevel is thrilled to have been featured in the June 2023 cover story of Government Procurement Magazine. Read below for an excerpt from the article:

Government Procurement Magazine Excerpt: June 2023 Edition

There is an increasing interest in small and disadvantaged business participation in public contracting; however, it’s often difficult for small local businesses to compete for government business. In El Paso, Texas, Sandy Grodin created a new office supply business from scratch-El Paso Office Products. Over the past decade, the company boasts $5 million to $6 million in annual sales with 90 percent of their sales volume from local government, K-12 school districts and colleges. With 16 employees, El Paso Office Products has become a successful certified small business. While growing the business, Grodin and his team often compete against large office supply operations and on-line platforms. However, when a large online supplier impressed the local school district with lower prices and on-line catalog, he feared if one local agency went in that direction, then others might follow, causing negative impacts to local businesses.

Grodin learned this online platform had approached his largest customer, El Paso Independent School District (EPISD), about creating a custom marketplace. The district was impressed by the presentation and promises of low prices. However, before signing on the dotted line, EPISD connected with local vendors about the potential change.

Grodin met with EPISD’s superintendent and purchasing team, having done his homework. In side-by-side comparisons, he demonstrated his company’s value, local economic benefits and local partnership as a powerful part of their customer service strategy. He was able to offer competitive pricing through an awarded cooperative contract.

The school district ultimately made the decision to combine all district-approved vendor catalogs, including El Paso Office Products, into one searchable on-line site by partnering with EqualLevel, a flexible e-commerce platform. With no supplier transaction fees or incurred costs for integrating a supplier’s existing e-commerce site, the district found EqualLevel’s platform to have similar advantages as large on-line competitors, but with greater local business focus. Through a special feature, as shoppers placed items in their carts, the EqualLevel Savings Advisor (ELSA) feature suggests best value substitutions, ensuring district purchasers were making the best possible selections.

According to EqualLevel Founder and CEO Orville Bailey, “This platform gives small businesses and distributors with limited IT capabilities the opportunity to establish a punchout catalog that integrates with most financial systems used by local governments and school districts. This increases the ability for small companies to appear in searches alongside their larger competitors to create an equal playing field.”

The full Government Procurement Magazine article can be found here.

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Case Study

Mesquite Independent School District Chooses eProcurement to Improve Efficiencies

September 22, 2022August 24, 2023

For years, the Purchasing Department at Mesquite Independent School District (ISD) had been searching for a way to maximize staff time and budget dollars with technology. The procurement process at district campuses included a mix of manual and electronic processes, and some requisitions even had to be handwritten and routed to several team-members for approval. It was difficult for staff to obtain multiple quotes for compliance purposes, much less comparison shop for best values.

eProcurement: The solution they were looking for.

In summer 2021, Mesquite ISD’s Purchasing Department leadership, made up of Director of Purchasing Darci Hooten, and Senior Buyer Kelly Burks, met with EqualLevel to discuss its procure-to-pay compliance platform. Mesquite ISD learned EqualLevel could create a platform that would offer them easy access digitally to approved vendor partners, as well as commodity codes at the product level, all in one location. They quickly saw how EqualLevel’s platform could potentially save the district thousands of dollars in both time and money.

“Seeing maverick spending reigned in would be huge,” said Hooten. “With the current system being so tedious and labor intensive, the marketplace could potentially speed up everything for everybody.”

Other features

The district was also excited to learn about other features of the marketplace:

Compliance: The marketplace would drive end-users to the district’s approved contracts.
Community Inclusion: The marketplace would give end-users the ability to shop from local vendors so more budget dollars remain in the community.
Savings: The marketplace’s AI-powered EqualLevel Savings Advisor (ELSA) would identify the best price among all district-approved suppliers for users while they shop.

In February 2022, the initiative became critical when a new district policy mandated the use of commodity codes on all requisitions and purchase orders. In a typical month the district was processing between 2,200 and 2,500 purchase orders. Hooten and Burks quickly realized campus staff simply could not absorb the additional coding work and faced the reality that the task would likely fall to their own overtaxed department. They were relieved to hear EqualLevel could sync the district’s commodity codes, automating the task and eliminating the need for any manual intervention. Now it was time for a decision: either automate to sync the codes, or hire a new team member to take on the extra work.

Mesquite Chooses EqualLevel

In mid-2022, Mesquite ISD chose EqualLevel to automate its procurement process, including full integration with its Munis ERP system. “The ability to lessen the load at the campus level and execute the commodity code project were critical points in getting buy-in from our CFO,” said Hooten. With the commodity code crosswalk, the savings that would be generated, and the flexibility and ease-of-use at the campus level, procurement would be able to deliver on multiple district initiatives in one program. “We conservatively estimate 10 to 15 percent savings just in hard dollars. That doesn’t include all the soft savings associated with the time our departments and campus staff will be saving,” said Hooten. “It’s going to be a major game changer.”

Update

In fall 2022 EqualLevel developers began building the commodity code crosswalk for Mesquite ISD. Unfortunately, they discovered the district’s financial system, Munis, would not support passing the code. EqualLevel was able to quickly create a custom solution for the district so their codes could be converted into their system. This work-around allowed Mesquite ISD to still meet its target go-live date.

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Blog

5 eProcurement Myths (And Why They Aren’t True)

September 6, 2022August 24, 2023

While the benefits of eProcurement are well known, there are still many agencies today that continue to utilize outdated and inefficient systems for purchasing. Of those organizations that have adopted online bidding and purchasing procedures, many still have not addressed the administrative inefficiencies that exist. From increased transparency and productivity, to proven hard dollar savings, eProcurement offers a solution for many of the challenges organizations face. So why aren’t more agencies adopting eProcurement? Read on to learn about the eProcurement myths that persist today, and why advancements in technology have rendered them moot.

Five Common eProcurement Myths

Myth 1:

With upfront costs for hardware as well as licensing fees, the price tag for implementation can easily stretch into the six figures.

FACT: Today’s cloud computing offerings cost much less than their predecessors. Without hardware or licensing fees required, only subscription fees, eProcurement is much more financially accessible than it once was.

Myth 2:

It is costly and complicated to integrate with an organization’s ERP system.

FACT: Advancements in technology have made integrating with an organization’s ERP easier than ever. In an American City & County article titled Removing The Obstacles To E-Procurement Adoption they report, “The availability (and low cost) of new technology standards such as XML have largely alleviated concerns about integrating e-procurement with back-end financial systems.” In fact, the syncing with an organization’s ERP allows items purchased to be assigned appropriate commodity codes to ensure transactions are posted appropriately for accounting purposes.

Myth 3:

For organizations with small or non-existent IT departments, management of an eProcurement platform is a drain on resources.

FACT: Cloud-based systems that offer a multi-vendor marketplace should only need to engage an organization’s IT department at initial ERP integration. eProcurement providers can easily manage supplier enablement, even for those vendors without existing punchout sites, eliminating the strain on buyer procurement and IT departments.

Myth 3:

For organizations with small or non-existent IT departments, management of an eProcurement platform is a drain on resources.

Myth 4:

Due to additional costs to suppliers and complex onboarding processes, large suppliers will stop selling to local governments that adopt eProcurement measures.

FACT: Today’s eProcurement marketplaces integrate all of an organization’s current suppliers at no extra cost to the supplier. What’s more, they can seamlessly incorporate suppliers regardless of technological capabilities or chosen platforms. In fact, eProcurement can streamline supplier engagement with the agency and help reduce operating costs for all parties involved.

Myth 5:

eProcurement systems prohibit organizations from working with small local businesses because it is either too costly for them, or just not feasible.

FACT: eProcurement systems now have the ability to integrate suppliers regardless of their size or technological capabilities. In fact, the creation of fully-featured eCommerce stores for local businesses, specifically designed to support punchout commerce, have been responsible for propelling countless local suppliers into the world of eProcurement.

Source: https://www.americancityandcounty.com/2011/08/01/removing-the-obstacles-to-e-procurement-adoption/

Case Study

City Adopts Best-of-Breed eProcurement Solution, User Acceptance Soars

August 17, 2022August 24, 2023

In 2021, despite having an end-to-end PunchOut system in place, the City of Sioux Falls’s procurement department was still processing thousands of purchase orders annually. Frustrated with the inefficiency of their system, procurement officers set out to find a best-of-breed eProcurement solution for the city.

The Problem

The city’s PunchOut system was ineffective and therefore not being utilized by employees in the field. Not only was it clunky, but it also lacked functionality, it was hard to access, and users found the checkout process cumbersome. It was easier to send requisitions for purchases to procurement than to try to make purchases through the system they had in place. The city was also limited in the number of catalogs the system could employ, leaving options for products also limited. Additionally, the procurement department found running reports to be a lengthy process in their former system.

About the City of Sioux Falls

Boasting highly rated schools, low tax rates, affordable housing, and a dynamic parks and recreation system, the City of Sioux Falls provides its citizens with a great place to live, work, learn and play. It is no wonder that in 2020, the city was voted tenth among the 100 best places to live in the U.S. (livability.com). Situated in the middle of the Great Plains, the City of Sioux Falls is the largest city in South Dakota, with a population of 180,927. Its progressive city government, with a 2022 operating budget of $281 million, is led by Mayor Paul TenHaken. The Mayor has continually pledged his commitment to investing city dollars into technology to improve processes.

Time for a Change

Purchasing Manager Scott Rust and Business Analyst Matt Newman knew that if they ever wanted to have a tool that made purchasing easier and that would be embraced by city employees, they would have to find one that was much more user-friendly. They set out to find a best-in-breed eProcurement platform that could provide an easy and effective shopping experience for end-users.

User Acceptance Number One Priority

Because user acceptance was the top priority for the city, they evaluated their options based on end-user needs. Rust and Newman created a list of features they surmised city departments would need in a new system. Then, they took that list to city employees to see if they were on the right track, and if there was anything that they may have missed. Based on the feedback they received they modified their list. “We listened to our end-users. We wanted them to be in the driver’s seat,” said Rust. Besides end-user acceptance, it was also important to the procurement department that the new system offer robust reporting capabilities.

Best-of-breed eProcurement System

The City of Sioux Falls set out to find a “best-of-breed” eProcurement system. They conducted a formal evaluation of systems recommended by their counterparts at various schools, cities, and states. One system that was endorsed, the EqualLevel marketplace, seemed to check all of the city’s boxes. With its ability to provide users with an easy and effective shopping experience with unlimited catalogs in one centralized location, along with its extensive reporting capabilities, EqualLevel’s system seemed like a win for both the city’s end-users and the procurement department alike. During a demo, the city looked at every facet of the software to determine ease-of-use for the end-user. The checkout process was simple and seamless. On the administrative side, they found the workflow worked well for routing purchases over a certain threshold to procurement. They were also impressed with the system’s dashboard and reporting features.

CFO Approval

Selling the product to the city’s CFO turned out to be an easy process for Rust and Newman. EqualLevel’s marketplace would cost less than their current product and it had a better ROI, making it a “no brainer,” said Newman. Having the ability to use a single sign-on through the city’s intranet, as well as the security certificate EqualLevel has in place, were selling points for the city’s IT department.

“We were surprised how fast it was adopted and how fast it earned a prominent spot on our city’s intranet.”

The City of Sioux Falls ultimately decided to partner with EqualLevel and signed a contract in fall 2021. The implementation process began with a kick-off meeting between the city and EqualLevel where the project was divided into stages and an aggressive timeline was established. The city supplied EqualLevel with the names of the suppliers that needed to be set up in the system. “EqualLevel worked closely with us and each of our suppliers. Some suppliers were more familiar with PunchOut than others. EqualLevel worked step-by-step with the companies that needed more help with the process,” Newman shared. In keeping with their timeline, the city was able to fully roll out the new system in April 2022. “The process was not too cumbersome at all,” said Rust. “We were surprised how fast it was adopted and how fast it earned a prominent spot on our city’s intranet.”

Launch

The City of Sioux Falls decided to launch its EqualLevel marketplace utilizing its pCard program for payment. Since the launch of the city’s new EqualLevel marketplace, there have been more orders, contract compliance has increased, and there has been less maverick spending. “Now that we have been able to add so many more catalogs, the spend has gone up on contract considerably,” said Rust. In the three months the system has been in use, over $350,000 in spend has been executed through the marketplace. In the last 30 days alone, there have been over $30,000 in purchases. “EqualLevel was able to create an easy-to-use, Amazon-like shopping experience for the city. EqualLevel’s flexibility allowed us to create the system we need. The checkout process is seamless. From the field to the office, everyone can use it,” said Rust.

Today, with the implementation of the EqualLevel program, the city has removed over 600 purchase orders from the system. Buyers no longer have to wait for procurement department approval before making purchases. “Having 600 plus requisitions out of our system has freed up procurement employees to do other things. With supply chain issues and federal money that has become available, procurement is not getting any less busy. It truly couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Rust.

More City Dollars Kept Locally

The city currently has 20 supplier catalogs onboarded with plans for more in the future. The fact that there is no limit to the number of catalogs that can be added equates to time savings for employees who can now utilize the procurement software as a one-stop-shop. Of the suppliers that have been onboarded, 12 have brick and mortar stores within city limits, allowing more of the city’s dollars to be kept locally. “Doing business with local retailers has been a priority for our city. With EqualLevel’s tool we are able to satisfy that goal,” said Rust.

Reporting

On the administrative side, the marketplace’s dashboard includes reports that show up-to-date spend for the month or for the week, or by user. Easy-to-run reports and the ability to customize ad hoc reports means the product is not just a fit for departments in the field, but also for city administrators.

User Acceptance

With 250 active users, the city has achieved a 70% user acceptance rate which is better than they had anticipated. End-users are taking ownership of the system including suggesting catalogs to add and providing ideas to make the software work even better for them. “With everything in one system, users are motivated to use it. People feel good about saving money with the built-in savings advisor, ELSA, and administrators like seeing their savings accumulate through the ELSA reporting,” said Newman.

pCards

The ease of using the pCards through the marketplace has provided other benefits as well. “The rebate with our pCard program has grown exponentially through the increased use of the marketplace,” said Newman. “This additional rebate further increases the product’s ROI.”

“The possibilities are endless.”

Now that phase one implementation has been completed, Rust and Newman look forward to watching the marketplace continue to evolve and to seeing the savings achieved after the system has been in place for a full 12 months. Phase two plans are in place to add more catalogs and more users. “The system will continue to evolve and get better as we use it. The possibilities are endless,” said Rust.

The city sought to build a best-of-breed procurement solution for their community and they believe they have found it. “The product provides ease-of-use for both the end-user and the administrator. The analytics of the tool are amazing. We now have so much information at our fingertips.” Rust and Newman are excited about the future and the growing benefits that the EqualLevel marketplace will provide.

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Blog

McKinsey Recommends SLED Digitize Procurement, Payables to Optimize Public Sector Savings

August 9, 2022August 24, 2023

Every year the state, local and education (SLED) procurement market spends a staggering $1.5 trillion dollars annually on goods and services. In 2018, after analyzing more than 700 procurement efforts, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company concluded that at 28 percent, the public sector has the potential for more savings than that of any other sector. In round dollars, this amounts to $400 billion in public sector savings by optimizing procurement.

Online Tools Reduce Administrative Burdens

The public sector has long been plagued by the inefficiencies and costs associated with manual requisitioning, ordering, invoice reconciliation, and payment processing. According to McKinsey, online tools can reduce these administrative burdens. Procure-to-pay automation improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement and payables processes by digitizing manual tasks and leveraging transparency to improve decision-making.

Innovating with a best-of-breed eProcurement and eInvoicing platform optimizes execution across all processes associated with the rec-order-pay transaction. A well-designed solution helps procurement and finance to streamline operations.

The benefits of eProcurement and eInvoicing are numerous:

Efficiency: Automating leads to faster cycle times and improved productivity. The elimination of paper and manual steps frees up time for employees to focus on more critical initiatives.

Cost Savings: With all approved vendors housed in one centralized location, best value products can be easily identified.

Compliance: By automating the three-bid process and showing only contracted vendors, an eProcurement marketplace helps organizations comply with state and federal regulations.

Transparency: Robust reporting capabilities help ensure purchases conform to established policies. Real-time visibility into purchasing activities discourages maverick spending and provides leadership with valuable insights.

There is no doubt “the use of modern technology can take a big chunk off of public-sector bills” and the time to automate procure-to-pay is now. By improving efficiencies, the SLED market has the opportunity to generate savings that can help to offset the budget pressures they are facing.

By Orville Bailey, CEO, EqualLevel.

Sources

How smarter purchasing can improve public-sector performance

Now is the Time for Procurement to Lead Value Capture

Click here to learn more about EqualLevel’s eProcurement solution.

Click here to learn more about EqualLevel’s payables solution.

Blog

How Cooperative Marketplaces Optimize Savings for Agencies

August 2, 2022August 24, 2023

Recently, leading cooperatives have recognized the need to create one-stop-shop transactional marketplaces for their members. Cooperative purchasing organizations like Sourcewell, E&I, MHEC, AEPA, and TIPS have announced or implemented cooperative marketplaces to help their members reduce price discovery, order processing and invoicing times.

Benefits

When you reduce costs within a government organization or institution, funds are freed up for other mission-specific uses allowing constituents to win, too. Cooperatives also realize benefits, with access to online spend reporting and tighter integrations with members topping the list.

About Cooperative Agreements

How are cooperative agreements established? 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.

Click here to learn about more EqualLevel’s work with cooperative purchasing organizations.

News

Cooperative Purchasing Organization Launches eMarketplace to Simplify Procurement for Members

April 6, 2022August 24, 2023

Cooperative Purchasing Organization MHEC, New England’s Premier Purchasing Consortium, has launched their new eMarketplace, the i-buy marketplace™. The i-buy marketplace™ simplifies purchasing for MHEC members by enabling them to buy from multiple contracts utilizing the same shopping cart and interface. With 50+ contracts in their porfolio, this significantly streamlines purchasing for members.

Many-to-many Capability

MHEC began their search for an online platform in 2020 when research indicated that its members wanted a simpler means to access and purchase from MHEC contracts. Chris Raymond, Director, Contracts and Operations, noted, “It was a difficult task to find a platform that could embrace everything that was needed. We have many contracts, many products and services, and many suppliers. We needed a purchasing platform that could enable a many-to-many capability to meet the requirements identified by our members, including systems integration. We found that with EqualLevel.”

Benefits

Michael Di Yeso, MHEC Executive Director spoke of the benefit of the i-buy marketplace™ for MHEC’s members stating, “We have over 2,100 members that range from large university systems to small local libraries, from municipal government offices to K-12 schools, all with varying levels of support for the purchasing function. Our i-buy marketplace™ delivers a powerful capability for our member organizations to target their search and purchase specifically to what they need, regardless of size, sector, location, or purchasing operations. It’s a game changer and I’m proud to offer it to our members.”

About MHEC

MHEC is a not-for-profit Group Purchasing Organization. The organization was created in 1977 to provide purchasing contracts for the state’s higher education systems. Its membership reach has since expanded to include any not-for-profit organization with an educational component located in the six New England states.

Click here to learn more about EqualLevel’s work with cooperative purchasing organizations.

Further Reading

eProcurement Platform Automates Cooperative Purchasing

How Cooperative Marketplaces Optimize Savings for Agencies

GPO Utilizes eProcurement Marketplace to Bring Vendor Catalogs Under One Umbrella

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Blog

eProcurement Solutions Provide Real-Time Information

January 28, 2022August 24, 2023

The role of procurement in education is evolving, and the pandemic provided a glimpse into one of the key drivers of this evolution–the importance of a procurement solution that provides real-time information. For much-needed supplies, such as personal protective equipment, procurement must have real-time information about supply, sources, and prices to accelerate decision-making and collaboration. Delays or inaccuracy in such information can lead to canceled orders, incomplete or delayed shipments, unwanted substitutions, and overpaying. The following are a few examples of how eProcurement solutions are advancing the use of real-time information in day-to-day procurement.

Real-time Comparison Shopping Across Approved Contracts

As consumers, we have always comparison shopped–haggling for the best price has been part of the earliest markets. With the emergence of the internet, comparison shopping can now be instantaneous. Consumers can find the same products from different suppliers with just a few clicks and then choose the best price. Unfortunately, requisitioners at work do not behave like consumers, and they tend to make the most convenient purchase. This convenience costs districts a significant amount each year. Artificial Intelligence technology now makes it possible to identify, in real-time, lower prices and substitutes for items prior to checkout.

Real-time Price Check

Real-time online price checks can proactively analyze thousands of contract price data points each day and identify discrepancies, enabling procurement to remedy pricing issues prior to purchase.

Real-time Evaluation of Invoices versus POs

Automating the matching process eliminates manual steps and instantly feeds the invoice into the financial system. When issues during matching are uncovered, the invoice is sent electronically back to the supplier to correct and resubmit.

60- to 90-day Implementation

Real-time procurement is a must for districts that want to streamline their procure-to-pay process and improve compliance and savings. School districts can see benefits quickly with applications that complement existing financial systems and can be implemented in 60 to 90 days. Often a return on investment can be achieved within a single fiscal year. By making informed decisions based on real-time data, school districts can quickly revert meaningful dollars directly back to the classroom.

This article was first published on the Florida Association of School Business Officials (FASBO) Bulletin Board.

Click here for more information about how EqualLevel’s eProcurement solution uses AI to provide procurement departments with the real-time information they need.

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Blog

Agencies Move Away from Full Suites in Favor of Best-of-breed Solutions

August 4, 2021August 24, 2023

In the past, public sector organizations utilized a single unified software solution, also known as a full suite solutions, for their operations data. Despite the efficiency and uniformity of these systems, full-suite solutions have shortcomings. Today, organizations are moving away from full-suite solutions to create specialized patchwork platforms made up of best-of-breed solutions.

The Shortcomings of Full Suite Solutions

In general, updates for full-suite solutions can be infrequent and lengthy to install due to their size and coverage. This renders the functionality of the suite incomplete and workarounds to support the ever-advancing needs of department users becomes commonplace. In addition, the lack of focus equates to departments utilizing solutions that are not built for their specific functional needs.

What is a best-of-breed solution?

With cXML integration standards and the accessibility of open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), agencies are now able to create a custom platforms that utilize best-of-breed solutions for each individual department function. With best-of-breed implementation, organizations ensure that their full-suite systems are open, their standards are based with APIs, and they have well-detailed documentation to optimize the approach.

The Benefits of Best-of-Breed Solutions

Best-of-breed solutions are designed to adapt and offer focused performance and specialization. They are smaller than full suites and run independently, updating smoothly and seamlessly without affecting other systems, accelerating beneficial returns, and reducing project risks.

The specialized nature of best-of-breed solutions allows manufacturers to quickly accommodate market changes and align solutions more closely with strategic business goals. Thus, agencies using best-of-breed solutions are more likely to create nuanced approaches to problems, quickly respond to market fluctuations and meet personalized requirements.

Because these systems are optimized for each niche, implementation and training (if necessary) are lighter, while user experience is generally straightforward and involves fewer stakeholders. Organizations then have access to in-depth documentation that outlines functionality for each solution and its respective performance report which can be used to promote efficiency.

The Best Solution for Your Organization

Businesses are presented with a multitude of solutions. To find the one best suited for your organization, select a solution that:

meets your specific functional needs without compromises
is built on a modern SAAS technology stack
helps maximize your ability to leverage the current enterprise system, and
has a strong product roadmap of future innovations.

Organizations and teams should consider best-of-breed solutions rather than bearing the costs and disruptions that come with outdated monolithic systems.

Click here for more information on EqualLevel’s best-of-breed eProcurement solution.

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Case Study

School District Procurement Department Uses Technology Streamline Process

May 25, 2021August 24, 2023

School district procurement departments often struggle with processes that are inefficient and not user-friendly. El Paso Independent School District (ISD) was no exception. When Ron Gatlin (now retired) was appointed Executive Director of Procurement and School Resources at El Paso ISD, he quickly realized the district’s need to transform procurement. Gatlin had heard about emerging technology that could help simplify and control spend, and expedite shopping, while also complying with Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR) and other state purchasing requirements.

Gatlin’s required features for the new platform were:

■ Easy implementation
■ Punchout capabilities
■ Multiple catalogs for EDGAR compliance
■ A one-stop-shop
■ The ability to identify local suppliers

Solution

Gatlin and colleague Leticia Rivera (Assistant Purchasing Director of Procurement and School Resources), took the lead in innovating El Paso ISD’s outdated procurement process. Their first step was to implement an electronic bidding system along with a K-12 enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, “TEAMS by Frontline,” for organizational management. Their next step was to integrate EqualLevel’s procure-to-pay solution to further extend their ERP system.

“This eliminates several steps and immensely speeds up the process.”

With the help of EqualLevel, Gatlin and Rivera created a procure-to-pay marketplace that offers a single, seamless platform to facilitate all processes associated with the shop-order-pay transaction. By eliminating any maverick spending and ensuring that staff is only purchasing through approved contracts, the district can demonstrate that they are being fiscally responsible with public funds. “Our staff can now go in and shop for what they want, push a button and it automatically turns into a requisition. They no longer have to type in the description, specs, or pricing, and can be ensured that all of those details are accurate and compliant,” Gatlin said after implementation. “This eliminates several steps and immensely speeds up the process.”

Savings

El Paso ISD also utilizes the EqualLevel Savings Advisor (ELSA) in their marketplace. ELSA is powered by artificial intelligence to automatically optimize spending and comparison shop punchout items to identify the best savings. In the first six months that ELSA was in use, the district saved $44,000.

Additional Benefits

Accounts Payable
Fewer purchase order changes and less invoice reconciliation.

Local Suppliers
EqualLevel’s marketplace was able to integrate more local suppliers, enabling El Paso ISD to support the community in which they work and live.

Morale
“The purchasing department was viewed as slowing down the process. Now campus staff is happy to have a more streamlined and efficient procurement process in place,” said Gatlin after implementation.

COVID-19 Ready
When the need arose to work remotely, procurement staff were able to continue their operations without interruption.

“The campus staff love it. They can go into the marketplace and shop for whatever they want in the online store and know that they are getting the best savings on products that are EDGAR compliant,” said Rivera after implementation. “We went from horse and buggy to the Starship Enterprise.”

Conclusion

Digitizing the procure-to-pay process has put El Paso ISD at the forefront of public procurement. Not only has it improved its complete purchasing process and the support provided to their campuses and classrooms immensely, it is allowing El Paso ISD to deliver efficient and effective management of its funding.

Click below for a printable version of this case study:

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