Volume Discounts and Bulk Purchasing: Maximizing Your Institution’s Purchasing Power
Nearly every area in education is experiencing increasing costs at the same time as funding levels and budgets remain uncertain. Volume discounts and bulk purchasing have become increasingly important in overcoming these challenges to reduce per-unit costs and strengthen negotiating power. How Volume Discounts Drive Immediate and Long-Term Savings Bulk purchasing drives volume discounts, but […]
Benefits of Group Purchasing Organizations: How Cooperatives Benefit Educational Institutions
Procurement teams in the education sector are being asked to deliver stronger value in an increasingly complex purchasing environment. Costs are rising; resources are tight, and compliance expectations continue to grow. As institutions look for ways to secure better pricing and reduce their administrative workloads, group purchasing organizations (GPOs) have become strategic partners. Cooperative supplier […]
E&I Membership Benefits: The Ultimate GPO for Cost Savings and Procurement Solutions
The outlook for academic institutions includes a now familiar landscape: enrollment, political, and cost pressures are expected to challenge most institutions. In higher ed, revenue projections are lower. State budgets for K–12 are trending flat to down. The pressure for procurement teams to reduce costs can feel unrelenting. E&I Cooperative Services plays a unique and […]
Cooperative Education Programs vs. Purchasing Cooperatives: Understanding the Difference
The word cooperative comes up regularly on campuses, but can mean completely different things. Although they share a similar context in working together, cooperative education programs are vastly different than cooperative procurement. So, when you’re talking about cooperatives with educators and administrators, you’ll want to clarify which type of cooperative program you’re talking about so […]
Cooperative Educational Services Explained: How BOCES Transforms School Procurement
One of the most effective ways for school districts to manage rising operational costs is to pool resources. In New York and Colorado, Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) provide educational and institutional cooperative services for K–12 districts to share staffing, funding, technology, and procurement functions. BOCES helps designated school districts within specific service areas […]
What Is an Educational Cooperative? Understanding Modern Procurement Partnerships
Higher education procurement teams face increasing complexity. Budgets are under pressure, compliance requirements continue to expand, and many offices operate with lean staff. In this environment, everyone is looking for ways to stretch resources, improve efficiency, and maintain strong governance. The term educational cooperative appears often in these conversations, but it can mean two very […]
Improving Procurement Efficiency: Best Practices for Buying Cooperatives
Are you constantly being asked to do more with less? We suspect the answer to that question is an unqualified yes. Across higher education, procurement teams are asked to do more with smaller budgets, fewer resources, and rising prices. It can feel a bit like swimming upstream while the current keeps pushing you back. Just […]
Spend Control Strategies: How Group Purchasing Transforms Campus Budgets
There’s a new fiscal reality in higher education, and procurement teams are increasingly being asked to thread the needle by finding lower costs without impacting quality. It’s no longer just about hitting budget numbers either. For many institutions, it’s about survival. The Forvis Mazars and NC State University Poole College of Management’s Annual Higher Education […]
Procurement Automation: Cutting Administrative Costs in Higher Education
Procurement today is complex. There are more suppliers to manage, tighter budgets, and mounting expectations for compliance and transparency. You have to work to reduce potential supply chain disruptions, while meeting institutional mandates and keeping a constant focus on cost control. Yet, manual processes are no longer keeping up with these demands, especially as many […]
Cooperative Purchasing for Colleges: How Group Buying Platforms Reduce Costs
In the past year, higher education procurement has gotten even more difficult. Deloitte’s 2025 Higher Education Trends report put it this way: “The increasing frequency of budget gaps is acting as a forcing function, compelling higher education institutions to move into the uncomfortable territory of entering into agreements to share resources to find scale.“ That […]