Procurement in higher education can feel like a giant puzzle with pieces of all shapes. Procurement teams must fit these pieces together, managing varying contracts, pieces that may not fit together exactly right, and infrastructure that makes it difficult to manage everything efficiently across departments and campuses.
Maybe a better analogy is the way Higher Ed Dive put it: “It’s like trying to conduct an orchestra where musicians practice in isolation, playing from different sheets of music.”
And yet, the stakes are high. Educational institutions navigate tight budgets, increased regulatory oversight, and rapidly evolving technology needs. Within this framework, strategic education contract management often gets lost in the shuffle. But academic institutions can no longer let that happen.
At its core, the procurement process in education includes five key stages:
What makes this process especially challenging in higher ed is the involvement of multiple stakeholders across academic, administrative, IT, and finance departments. Each may have unique needs and goals. Layer in grant funding, compliance mandates, and decentralized decision-making, and it’s easy to see how procurement becomes fragmented.
A strong contract management strategy brings discipline to the procurement process in education, aligning purchasing with institutional goals while maintaining flexibility and compliance.
One of the most effective ways to strengthen contract management is to standardize documentation, workflows, and evaluation methods across all departments. It can be challenging when you have decentralized purchasing, but getting everyone to follow the same processes and use the same KPIs makes it easier to compare proposals, track progress, and enforce contract terms.
Tools like contract templates, routing rules, and automated approval workflows can help you manage contract lifecycles.
It starts at the beginning of the procurement process. Contracts shouldn’t be treated as one-time transactions. Strategic education contract management demands a lifecycle approach, including:
This approach helps you make sure your contracts continuously deliver value. It also helps monitor whether suppliers are delivering on their promises and reduces the risk of surprise renewals. Letting contracts auto-renew without a review can be extremely expensive.
During the procurement process in education, you need to mitigate risk. Your contract management strategy should be proactive, asking questions such as:
You need the flexibility to manage through change, and we’re seeing plenty of that right now.
When it comes to technology, the list gets a bit longer. Besides evaluating the right technology and cost, procurement teams must also evaluate:
This is especially important in EdTech contracts, where functionality, uptime, and security can directly impact performance and student outcomes.
One of the most common pitfalls in education contract management is the disconnect between contract signing and implementation. The terms look good on paper, but rollout can stall and timelines go unmet. An important part of contract management is implementation. Contracts should be designed to manage implementation with built-in mechanisms for feedback and mid-course correction.
Many higher ed procurement teams face staffing limitations and tight timelines. Cooperative contracts offer a strategic advantage by handling the competitive solicitation process on your behalf and delivering:
Cooperative contracts often result in savings of 4-10%, based on volume pricing from multiple institutions.
Higher education procurement doesn’t have to feel chaotic. With a clear, standardized approach to contract management, you can gain greater control over spend and drive long-term value. When supported by cooperative contracts, procurement teams can take a leadership role in helping institutions stay on track and meet financial goals.
Stop letting contract management feel chaotic. Explore E&I’s pre-negotiated cooperative contracts and eliminate the complexity from your procurement process.