ICT Collaborations
Joint Purchasing |
Summary
Jointly agreeing a specification of hardware or software can help to bring purchasing power through bulk ordering. This can mean financial savings. Sharing experience of equipment suppliers between partners may help with decision-making. When specifying equipment, one partner may have experience of accessibility issues or have experience of other technical issues that may help the partnership in a purchasing decision. Joint purchasing may extend to support services.
Discussion
In theory, clubbing together to buy makes financial sense, and can also help with tricky and expensive areas, such as buying in expert advice on technical requirements, technical developments, support for ongoing maintenance, or sharing staff training. Good examples of the practice are, however, harder to uncover than might be expected. Differences in the specifications of machines and software needed, and different priorities and timescales among purchasing partners has led to some collaborations being slow, abandoned, or of doubtful value.
Pros |
Cons |
Leverage and financial savings |
Compromises in specification on one side or on all sides |
Sharing the development of technical specifications |
Timescales for procurement may not match |
Sharing product research tasks and findings |
|
Sharing experience in use and maintenance |
Case studies: Community First, FOSS and BME Complementary learning network.
Wider examples: You can find details about a range of organisations that broker deals on behalf of voluntary and community organisations at www.icthub.org.uk/suppliers_directory and www.icthub.org.uk/discounted_deals.