E&I Members: How likely are you to recommend E&I Cooperative Services to a peer?
Does it seem like you’re working harder these days? It’s not your imagination. 58% of procurement teams report significantly increased workloads, yet only 13% have seen any increases in staffing in 2026.
For procurement leaders in higher education, those numbers probably feel familiar. Institutions are facing ongoing budget pressures, rising expectations from campus stakeholders, and increasing demands for compliance and transparency. At the same time, procurement teams are often being asked to identify new savings opportunities without additional personnel or resources.
As a result, many colleges and universities are looking more closely at their spending data.
Many colleges and universities operate in decentralized purchasing environments where departments purchase similar products and services from different suppliers, creating fragmented spending patterns that are difficult to track and manage.
Limited spend visibility can also create hidden costs, including:
Improving spend visibility is often the first step toward building a more strategic procurement function.
Spend analysis consultants and spend analysis providers help organizations collect, cleanse, categorize, and analyze purchasing data. Their objective is to identify spending patterns, sourcing opportunities, supplier consolidation opportunities, and areas where organizations may be able to reduce costs or improve procurement performance.
There are some pros and cons.
Potential Benefits | Potential Drawbacks |
Detailed spend visibility across categories and suppliers | Consulting engagements can be expensive |
Data-driven recommendations for sourcing opportunities | Projects may require significant internal support and data preparation |
Improved reporting and benchmarking capabilities | Recommendations still require time and resources to implement |
Identification of supplier consolidation opportunities | Analysis alone does not automatically generate savings |
Greater understanding of procurement trends and spending patterns | Additional consulting support may be needed to execute recommendations |
Cost is also a factor. Spend analysis consultants aren’t cheap.
Unlike spend analysis providers, E&I Cooperative Services offers no-cost Strategic Spend Assessments (SSAs) to its members. SSAs go beyond identifying where spending occurs by evaluating how spending compares with cooperative contracts. This can uncover immediate savings opportunities, often with suppliers you may already be working with. By adopting one of E&I’s competitively solicited cooperative contracts, you may be able to benefit from volume discounts achieved by combining demand across thousands of other academic institutions.
E&I assigns a dedicated Sourcing Consultant and Strategic Sourcing Analyst to analyze your high-level spend data. You do not need to provide transaction-level detail, so the data gathering process is usually simple, exporting AP and card transactions from your financial systems. All data is kept confidential.
Strategic Spend Assessments focus on several key areas to uncover hidden savings opportunities:
Using both current contracts and upcoming RFPs, we can help you identify future alignment opportunities to further reduce your procurement costs.
Beyond identifying potential savings, the assessment helps institutions understand the broader economic impact of procurement decisions.
The E&I Economic Benefit ModelTM is built into every contract to help you see the total value derived. This includes accounting for:
To help you evaluate the best approach for your institution’s resources, here is how a traditional consulting engagement stacks up against an E&I Strategic Spend Assessment across key procurement metrics.
Feature / Capability | Spend Analysis Consultants | E&I Strategic Spend Assessment |
Upfront Cost | High | No-Cost for member institutions |
Staff Time Required | Heavy (Months of data cleaning & IT support) | Minimal (Simple AP/P-card data export) |
Primary Deliverable | Static report or software dashboard | Actionable contract alignment roadmap |
Execution Support | None (Your team must run the resulting RFPs) | Immediate (Access to pre-solicited contracts) |
Higher Ed Expertise | Generalist or corporate-focused | 100% dedicated to education procurement |
E&I Cooperative Services is the only nonprofit, member-owned sourcing cooperative that focuses exclusively on the education sector. Working on behalf of more than 6,200 academic institutions, E& provides a range of services to help procurement teams maximize spend, including access to more than 215 competitively solicited cooperative agreements.
To get started with a no-cost Strategic Spend Assessment, contact your E&I rep today. If your institution is not already a member, register to become one. Membership is free and there is no minimum purchasing requirement.