We are very pleased to share our cooperative purchasing revamp report with you. This plan is the culmination of our 2018 strategic initiative to revisit our cooperative purchasing service to ensure that it is providing the most important and desirable services to its members.
Some of the key points of the plan are:
- The new vision of the cooperative purchasing service includes four primary service areas: awareness, expansion, negotiation, and day-to-day management.
- We will continue to narrow the “base” of day-to-day management in order to focus more energy on the other service areas.
- We will work to improve response time and other components of the day-to-day management in order to provide excellent service.
- Each of the service areas outlined above has a service development priority in the report with more details about our plans for the area.
While the plan isn’t a strong departure from our current service, we expect the changes will redirect our energy to provide members more of what they want and need from a cooperative purchasing service.
This isn’t a report that’s going to sit on a shelf. We’ve already begun to operationalize some of the activities laid out in the plan, and we expect these changes to improve and add value to the service we provide our members.
We’ve scheduled some cooperative purchasing member web meetings in January for mutual information sharing: we’ll provide some information about the report and we hope you’ll share your thoughts with us — not just about the report but our cooperative purchasing service and how we can do things better. The sessions are:
Academic library members
- January 14th, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/993035853
- January 22nd, 1:00 – 2:00 pm: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/578055909
Public library and system members
- January 22nd, 2:00 – 3:00 pm: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/817376237
K12 members
- January 25th, 2:00 – 3:00 pm: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/577311469
- January 28th, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/214583701
Please let us know any questions, concerns (or compliments!) at any time. We view this report as a starting point. We expect to make continuous improvements to the plan based on member feedback and experiences.
Thank you for taking the time to read this message, for being a member of the cooperative purchasing service, and for any information you share with us as we begin this new path of service for cooperative purchasing.
– The WiLS Cooperative Purchasing Team