Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Six Steps to Procurement Optimization

  • By Tom Fitzgerald
  • 01/01/16

There’s an obvious connection between supply chain efficiency and financial sustainability. Here are six areas critical to helping colleges and universities optimize P2P operations:

1. Information/Insight/Intelligence
It all begins with data. Make sure you have a solid handle on analytics/data across the entire enterprise. Quality data is the foundation for any successful procurement organization.

2. Strategy/Policy
A defined policy must be established to ensure your procurement organization is strategic in its sourcing efforts. This policy must be adopted cross-functionally across the entire organization.

3. People/Culture
Are you staffed adequately and do you have the right people in the right positions? It’s important to review staff expertise levels and conduct a skill-level assessment to identify gaps or overlaps in these resources.

4. Process/Organization
Look closely at the operational design and organizational structure of the procurement function. All things must be aligned so that people, process and technology are optimized toward efficiency.

5. Technology Adoption
This includes p-card utilization, P2P automation and e-commerce initiatives. An effective e-procurement system can significantly improve process efficiencies by eliminating paperwork, expediting contract fulfillment and controlling compliance.

6. Monitoring and Controls
Institutions must identify ways to monitor and measure these efforts in order to determine ROI. This ROI should be benchmarked against business objectives to drive cost containment, revenue enhancement and performance metrics management.

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

About the Author

Tom Fitzgerald is CEO of E&I Cooperative Services, the nation's premier purchasing cooperative serving the needs of education. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Myrtle Grove Elementary

    Phased Construction Keeps Students on Campus During Rebuild

    When Escambia County School District needed to replace most of Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Pensacola, Fla., it had three distinct challenges: honor the school's legacy in the community, bring state-of-the-art learning environments to the county, and be seamlessly built on the same site as the active school campus.

  • GeoCam and UCLA: Modernizing Campus Accessibility Mapping

    In early 2025, UCLA partnered with GeoCam to capture and modernize its pedestrian infrastructure data. The goal was ambitious but clear: to produce a high-accuracy, imagery-backed digital map of every sidewalk, pathway, ramp, and ADA-related feature on UCLA’s 419-acre campus.

  • Phoenix School District Breaks Ground on New Prep Academy

    The Creighton Elementary School District near Phoenix, Ariz., recently broke ground on a campus replacement for Biltmore Preparatory Academy, according to a news release. The new space will allow the school to expand its enrollment by 50 percent for K–8 students and accommodate modern, collaborative learning styles.