When most people think about procurement costs, they focus on the final price of goods or services. But public procurement professionals know there’s more to the story. Beyond the invoice or purchase order lies a web of “soft costs”—time, labor, and administrative expenses that quietly eat into budgets. These hidden costs can make the difference between a cost-effective purchase and an expensive process.
Below are five common soft costs in procurement—and how cooperative purchasing helps minimize or even eliminate them.
1. Time Spent on Solicitation Development
Writing solicitations, conducting market research, and preparing bid documents can take weeks or even months. For complex purchases, staff often invest hundreds of hours just to get a solicitation ready for release. With cooperative purchasing, agencies can leverage competitively solicited contracts that already meet federal and state procurement standards. This eliminates the need to start from scratch, saving staff time while ensuring compliance.
2. Advertising and Bid Publication Costs
Public agencies are required to publicly advertise solicitations to ensure competition and transparency. That means paying for newspaper notices, online listings, or trade publications—sometimes several times for one bid. Cooperative contracts, on the other hand, have already gone through this public process. By “piggybacking” on an existing cooperative contract, agencies avoid the expense of advertising altogether while still benefiting from an open and competitive solicitation.
GovMVMT takes extensive efforts to advertise in national and local publications to ensure compliance nationwide. You can view each contract’s transparent advertising report on the supplier’s GovMVMT webpage.
3. Staff Labor for Evaluations and Award
Bid evaluations can be among the most labor-intensive parts of procurement. Reviewing and scoring proposals, verifying vendor qualifications, and conducting reference checks require time from multiple staff members—procurement officers, department heads, and legal teams alike. Cooperative purchasing organizations handle this step for you. Each GovMVMT cooperative contract has already been competitively awarded by a lead public agency, meaning the heavy lifting is done. Your team can focus on selecting the right supplier, not managing the process.
4. Legal and Contract Review
Every solicitation and resulting contract must pass through legal review to ensure compliance with statutes, terms, and risk management standards. That can mean hours of attorney time and potential delays in project timelines. Credible cooperative purchasing contracts meet legal compliance standards and are publicly awarded, often with all terms and conditions available for review. Agencies can reference these approved agreements, reducing or even eliminating additional legal expenses.
5. Forecasting and Volatility Savings
Agencies have the ability to access established pricing through an existing competitive contract for the purposes of forecasting—knowing the pricing upfront, instead of waiting for a lengthy solicitation process, allows public agencies to more accurately predict their spend—while also potentially insulating their agency from volatile markets and rising prices. Pricing lists for GovMVMT’s contracts are available upon registration.
The Cooperative Advantage
When added together, these costs can easily exceed thousands—or even tens of thousands—of dollars per contract. Cooperative purchasing streamlines the process, offering compliance, efficiency, and cost savings in one solution. By using contracts that have already been competitively solicited by a trusted lead agency, public entities gain access to national pricing, trusted suppliers, and a faster path to procure—all while staying fully compliant with procurement regulations.
