Free online resource saves time for public buyers as they search for the right cooperative contract

Public buyers will increase their use of cooperative purchasing agreements down the road, believes Mariel Reed, co-founder and CEO at CoProcure. “The future is more: more cooperative contracts, from more businesses, in more categories. We’re excited to be helping to build this future because we think it’s one that delivers more value for taxpayers.”

CoProcure is a free online resource that enables searching 300+ national, state and local sources and more than 50,000 active cooperative contracts. It helps buyers identify and compare relevant contracts. The site lets users view documents such as the solicitation, contract and amendments directly in their browser or download them to confirm that they meet an agency’s compliance needs. Users can browse contracts by category. They can also search by product, zip code and public entity.

In 2022, governments and public procurement offices are under tons of pressure to do more with less, Reed tells Co-op Solutions. “In a recent poll, we saw that over 90 percent of public procurement professionals are interested in using cooperative contracts to save time. CoProcure helps public procurement teams save time looking for cooperative contracts and overall expedite the time to purchase by leveraging cooperative contracts more often, including for unexpected categories like local services.”

The search tool from Reed’s firm helps public buyers see cooperative purchasing options all in one place, in just a few seconds. It helps buyers answer these questions: Should you run a new competitive solicitation process, or is there a cooperative contract—or maybe a few contracts—that meet your agency’s purchasing and compliance requirements?

Reed spotlights some of the data points that CoProcure provides: “Today, a user can enter a search term and see contract results that meet their needs. They can quickly view the name of the contract, the public entity and/or purchasing cooperative that created the contract, the awarded supplier, when the contract was created, and its expiration date. For many results, the user can access full contract documents, including the original solicitation, contract, and any amendments and modifications.”

Reed notes that in a growing number of search results in the CoProcure platform, the user can also quickly confirm which products or services are available under the scope of a contract. She adds that a user can view details about the supplier on contract, including if the supplier has one or more diversity certifications, and get in touch with the awarded supplier through the platform. “By providing public procurement professionals with this information, we aim to empower them to make better, faster buying decisions.”

CoProcure is easily accessible right on the toolbar; users just click and go straight to it. The setup helps public buyers save time in searching for active cooperative contracts. It also enables them to share an agency’s own cooperative contracts more broadly with governments within the region.

The search tool aggregates information that has previously been time-consuming or difficult to discover through manual processes. Its search mechanism helps cut down on the time that public procurement professionals need to spend looking for appropriate cooperative contracts. John Tigert, contracting agent in Virginia Beach, Va., says: “Before I started using CoProcure, I’d spend about 14 hours each month searching for cooperative and piggy-backable contracts from different sources. CoProcure now helps me do that same work in just minutes.”

CoProcure helps public buyers use cooperative contracts to expedite the time to procure. “Running a new solicitation process typically takes four to 24 months; purchasing from a cooperative contract can happen in days, or even hours. By expediting the time to procure, CoProcure is helping procurement professionals delight end users and deliver faster, more responsive public services to their communities,” Reed explains. She adds that purchasing teams in communities such as the city of Fort Myers, Fla., use her firm’s search tool more than 25 times each month to find contracts for furniture, software, and automotive parts and equipment.

The online resource is now enabling buying teams in Orange County, Calif., and other communities to use the system to publish their contracts and embed the search experience directly on their own websites. “In this way, we’re reducing the number of emails and requests for information that procurement teams need to respond to—while also making these contracts available to the public procurement community nationwide,” Reed tells Co-op Solutions.

Reed believes CoProcure as a search tool can be used to enhance equity. It can also help diversify the supplier pool in the public buying process. “There’s a common misconception that the ease and speed of utilizing a cooperative contract are at odds with achieving equity in contracting or local economic development objectives. One of the reasons we’re so excited to be working on CoProcure is there’s a huge opportunity to level the playing field for small, local, and diverse businesses selling into government.” She adds that as taxpayers, we all want more businesses serving the government market because more competition in the market will lead to better, less expensive public services.

She points out a few ways that cooperative agreements can be used to expand opportunities for small and diverse businesses. “First, oftentimes local and diverse businesses are actually available to sell through a national purchasing cooperative contract, but the information about that business is not discoverable. We’re working on making this information easier to find. Second, there are many businesses that have been awarded contracts by local entities, but there’s a mismatch: the local entity hasn’t published these contracts, so they’re not discoverable to others in the region, and the local or diverse business doesn’t know about cooperative purchasing, so even though they’ve been awarded a contract they can use to sell to other governments, they don’t know how to use it.”

Reed says that by working with more local entities like Orange County, Calif., to publish their contracts, CoProcure administrators are starting to unlock more contract data—especially local contracts with more diverse and local businesses—and make these businesses more discoverable.

CoProcure provides a supplier diversity filter, so public agencies that prioritize equity in contracting goals can filter their results to give preference to working with these businesses on cooperative contracts. Of the 40,000 suppliers on CoProcure available on cooperative contracts, over one-quarter of those businesses have one or more diversity credentials.

Michael Keating is senior editor for American City & County. Contact him at [email protected].