History
Sourcing Office, originally the Northeast Ohio Sourcing Office (NEO|SO), launched in 2005 with a simple goal: improve the economic condition of local governments and organizations in Northeast Ohio. Many local government entities spend billions in taxpayer dollars each year, largely in isolation from one another.
Expenses and demands include aging infrastructures, increasing social service demands, ongoing investment in new technologies and an aging baby boomer workforce.
The founders of Sourcing Office realized that a program was needed to streamline these processes to save both government entities and taxpayers money. As a result, Sourcing Office was created to identify and develop cost-saving opportunities.
Reduce Costs, Increase Efficiencies
In 2004, a group of public sector business and civic leaders came together to address the challenges in Northeast Ohio. With 16 counties and more than 850 local governments, costs were spiraling out of control and the local economy could not support an increase in taxes. In partnership with a local community foundation and a group of inner-ring suburbs, a team led a nine-month pilot project to determine whether group purchasing programs and related collaborations could reduce costs and increase efficiencies. The pilot project was an overwhelming success and identified savings opportunities of 11 percent on $22 million in annual spending.
Local governments are required to conduct cumbersome procurement processes for the purchase of most products and services. A key finding in the pilot project is that local governments can delegate this procurement process and piggyback on contracts that were properly procured by other governments. NEO|SO was created in October 2005 as a council of governments and 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit organization. As a government entity, NEO|SO can conduct procurement processes and enter into contracts with suppliers on behalf of its participants.
Between late 2005 and early 2009, NEO|SO tested this approach for streamlining public procurement. NEO|SO launched more than a dozen programs, ranging from information technology services to auto parts, and grew to more than 90 participants across Northeast Ohio. Through the development and management of these programs, NEO|SO learned how to identify ideal spending categories for collaboration, build group purchasing programs that save time and money, develop contracts in full compliance with applicable regulations, and grow program participation amongst public and non-profit organizations.
NEO|SO’s success and growth attracted the attention of public sector entities and suppliers from across the country. NEO|SO began partnering with associations to provide a fully-managed group purchasing program for those associations’ members, thereby aggregating the buying power of hundreds of organizations in multiple states.
Sourcing Office Today
In recognition of NEO|SO’s growing national presence, NEO|SO’s Board of Directors and membership approved changing the name of the organization to Sourcing Office in 2009. Sourcing Office now develops group purchasing programs at the national, state-wide, and local levels and makes these programs available to local governments, non-profit organizations, and private companies from coast to coast. Additional programs are also being researched and developed that will be of value to both public sector institutions and suppliers.