Educational and Institutional Cooperative Purchasing – Case Study
Cutting Costs with E&I is a Long Tradition at the University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame is one of the nation’s most select institutions of higher learning with a unique spirit and an unyielding commitment to value. E&I and Notre Dame have enjoyed a long-standing relationship dating back to 1947. According to Tom Rogers, procurement Specialist at Notre Dame, membership in the Cooperative has many advantages.

He joined the staff at Notre Dame in 1981 and immediately saw the benefits of E&I membership. “The obvious advantage is consortium buying. It’s appealing to most higher Ed institutions,” he explains. “Suppliers are willing to offer advantageous contracts to E&I because the organization combines the purchasing power of more than 1,500 members. These contracts often provide us with benefits and savings we would not be able to achieve on our own.”

The university has turned to E&I for discounts on a variety of products and services throughout the years with the most widely used being Steelcase. Recently Notre Dame has taken advantage of E&I’s competitively awarded Grainger Contract.

E&I’s new Grainger contract delivers much more than cost savings.
“Our purchase has historically been fragmented between multiple vendors,” explains Rogers. “We have made few attempts to reduce our vendor base and aggregation of spend. Now we are attempting to create master buying agreements with selected vendors in multiple commodity areas to achieve lower pricing and drive down total costs. When it came time to select a Maintenance and Repair Operations (MRO) vendor, we began by creating a list of repetitively purchased MRO items and competitively bid that list with Grainger and their direct competitor. In the end, E&I’s Grainger contract not only offered us the best pricing but other benefits such as free shipping and 24-hour delivery on the majority of items offered in their catalog. Their program through E&I seemed like an idea fit for us.”

Tiered plans gave Notre Dame more control and more savings.
Notre Dame’s first agreement with Grainger through E&I was the basic plan which provided an automatic 10 percent discount. As their relationship grew and purchasing further consolidated, they moved into what was known as the committed plan. According to Rogers, “At this next level we received deeper discounts on approximately 20 to 30 of the manufacturers from 15 percent up to as much as 50 percent.” He continues, “At that point, we developed a core list of janitorial supplies that we typically warehoused on campus and presented that to Grainger as a separate bid opportunity. They responded with even lower pricing on that list and we immediately recognized an annual savings of $45,000 on that list alone.”

Enhanced efficiency is one more benefit of cooperative purchasing.
Rogers says that beyond the lower prices and free shipping, Notre Dame has enjoyed excellent sales representative and a streamlined purchasing process. “We were able to seamlessly integrate Grainger into our SciQuest electronic procurement system,” explains Rogers. “We created a link which enables our campus users to punch out and shop the Grainger catalog, create a shopping cart, and place their orders all within one comprehensive system. Ordering efficiencies and processing speed have improved dramatically as a result of this integration, and our warehouse personnel are delighted with the program.

The MRO commodity is huge purchasing are and often difficult for a college campus to manage. Rogers thinks consolidation is key concept in terms of the potential advantage of the Grainger agreement.

Educational & Institutional Cooperative Purchasing (E&I) is the buying cooperative established in 1934 by members of the National Association of Educational Procurement (NAEP) to serve colleges and universities. As the only national group purchasing organization for higher education, E&I uses the combined purchasing power of more than 1,500 member institutions to lower costs on a wide range of products and services.

Find complete details on all E&I contracts and information about how easy it is to become a member by visiting www.eandi.org or calling 800-283-2634.

This is a reprint from an original article that appeared in the December 2006 issue of the E&I Report.