Page 16 - THE Journal Innovation in Education, October 2021

Innovation in Education | Q & A: EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT
How to Tame the Cloud with One Call
E&I Cooperative Services, a member-owned, non-profit sourcing cooperative for education, does a lot more for K-12 than just provide better pricing for its over 5,500 members, as Vice President of Technology Keith Fowlkes explains in this interview.
Keith Fowlkes
Vice President, Technology E&I Cooperative Services
A lot of districts belong to regional service providers already that help them with consortium buying. How do you set yourself apart from those providers?
E&I’s extensive member base allows us to negotiate
better contract terms and conditions and offer high-
quality competitive contracts. Our contracts are much more flexible than most other cooperative and consortia contracts, offering full catalogs and staying current with the latest products and services. In addition, our contract process follows NIGP standards and meets most state
and federal guidelines for competitive solicitations. So,
if a school says, “Hey, I want x product,” instead of going through the RFP process, picking the top three vendors and making the award, they can use our contracts off-the-shelf, because our contracts have already been competitively solicited. Oftentimes, the result is a better price, a faster vehicle to use, and superior terms and conditions.
Even at price parity with current sources, our members have the opportunity to save more, since member purchases are eligible for a patronage refund at the
end of the year. For-profit organizations will just pocket that money as revenue. As a member-owned non-profit cooperative, we do not operate that way. We maintain a certain amount to operate, and pending Board approval,
a percentage of the balance goes back to members who purchased that year in the form of patronage.
Are there other services besides negotiation and contract formulation that are provided by E&I? Yes! Another valuable service we offer to members are Strategic Sourcing Assessments or SSAs. We work with an educational institution and analyze their spend over the course of six months to a year in terms of what they buy and where they buy it from. Our analysts and sourcing consultants then collaborate with procurement personnel at the district to review their data and determine how
E&I contracts can effectively help them streamline their activities and save money.
We also recently launched a new e-procurement solution for our members called the E&I Marketplace. This new service allows users across an institution’s departments to shop for products and services available through E&I contracts. We are really excited to offer this new service designed to help our members optimize their sourcing operations.
Regarding our contract offerings, we are very excited about the new Carahsoft Cloud Solutions and Services Distributor contract, which is the one of the latest agreements in the E&I Technology portfolio. Carahsoft is the largest distributor of cloud software and services in education today. In fact, Carahsoft offers over 400 cloud products and services! Plus, the company provides the
best support team and software tools to help schools and systems keep up with licensing. How do you buy all of the Software -as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Desktop-as-a- Service (DaaS) applications out there? How do you manage all those licenses for software users who may not actually work in your school anymore? How do you recover the licenses for others in your district who need them?
How does Carahsoft help schools get their cloud and managed services purchasing under control? As a CIO in education for nearly 30 years, I understand the insurmountable challenge when dealing with dozens of different software companies doing individual licensing of software. It can be impossible to wrangle.
Carahsoft has a proactive renewal nurturing program known as “Affinity to Infinity.” I love this program. It helps districts consolidate all of their “rogue spend” — those folks that have purchasing cards (P-Cards), and they’re out buying cloud services here and there, and you’re never really sure what price they’re getting. IT and procurement people need to get that spend under control. Once that’s
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