More with less: Strategic procurement’s transformative impact on public agencies

Public agencies are the backbones of our communities. They keep us healthy, ensure businesses run smoothly, fortify local economies and are essential to our overall well-being. Even amid significant resource constraints, from shrinking budgets to competition for talent to time-intensive compliance processes, public agencies continue delivering essential services and have a huge impact on our day-to-day lives. 

Public agencies shouldn’t—and don’t—have to weather these burdens alone. Promising technological innovations are emerging that can help them create efficiencies, drive incremental value, upskill their workforce and improve resiliency in the year ahead. 

Learning from data
Advancements in technology are leveling the playing field like never before, granting smaller public agencies the same access to information as their larger corporate counterparts. Insight into how and where organizations are spending on a granular and, critically, holistic level can help ensure that procurement is strategic rather than task driven. 

It is not only access to data that is important, but also what procurement teams are able to accomplish with it. Strategic partners can help public agencies analyze their spend data and leverage it to develop a custom roadmap of the way forward—identifying opportunities to drive incremental value. This enables organizations to stretch existing resources and, beyond this, helps team members spend less time on administrative items and more time on higher level activities. 

Data analytics capabilities have never been more wide-reaching or impactful. Public sector procurement teams should take advantage of these developments to build a better understanding of their expenditures so they can invest more in what matters most: serving their communities.  

Leveraging procurement platforms
In addition to data, new technology platforms can boost efficiency for public agency procurement teams. Some cooperative purchasing organizations offer free e-commerce platforms that streamline supplier and SKU selection, allowing buyers to purchase what they need across categories all in one cart.

The benefits are significant: instead of spending hours researching and going through a competitive bid process to secure important resources—a process that could take many hours over the course of many weeks—buyers can have what they need at their fingertips within minutes and with a contract that has already been competitively solicited and publicly awarded by a lead agency. 

Certain platforms can also help enhance buyer-supplier communications via chat functions that allow agencies to connect with suppliers directly and in one place. As a result, agencies can easily ask questions and receive answers, saving hours of time going back and forth with representatives at different companies. 

Enhancing collaboration
Improved data analytics and technological capabilities are useful tools, but human insight is what maximizes their efficacy. 

Collaboration among departments is key to capturing this insight. For too long, procurement teams have been siloed from other agency departments. But the work they do is complex, impacting nearly every, if not all, facet of organizational operations. Without a robust understanding of needs and challenges across the agency, procurement will not be as effective. Thus, public agency procurement teams should be integrated across the organization.

Clear, accessible spend data can help with collaboration as well. When members across the organization have access to the same information, they can more easily work together on a path forward. 

When considering how to best support and uplift talent, it’s important to think outside of the organization as well. A cooperative purchasing organization or a group purchasing organization (GPO) can provide scalable access to tools and systems to enhance the efficiency and quality of procurement decisions. Some GPOs also bring with them an unparalleled depth, breadth and strength of supplier relationships—all essential elements of procurement—that agencies can leverage to purchase what they need, when they need it, at the best value. 

Looking ahead
Moreso than in the private sector, public agencies are often forced to adopt a “less is more” mindset. This doesn’t have to be a disadvantage: by embracing data analytics, technology and talent, public sector teams can make this “less” about time. Through strategic procurement, public agencies can spend less time researching, less time on burdensome processes and less time buying. 

The end of one year and the beginning of the next presents a natural reflection point. As they look ahead, public agency procurement teams should remember they are not alone: with the right data, technology and strategic partner, they can strengthen their organizations long into the future.