Mulching for Dollars: Reverse Auctions Provide Savings Beyond The Garden Variety | Bizcovering

A Very Competitive Reverse Auction Helps a Georgia School District Save Over a Third of Its Budgeted Outlay for Pine Straw.



OVERVIEW

As any Southerner knows, if there’s one drawback of having the shade of majestic pine trees it’s the raking of the pine straw that falls from the heights of the trees’ branches. Many a weekend in the South is spent raking, raking, and more raking. The homeowner’s nuisance however, is also a valuable commodity, as across the South, and indeed in many parts of the country, that same pine straw is a valuable landscaping tool.

For institutional buyers, buying enough pine straw to cover all the flower beds and landscaped spaces can amount to quite a bit of money. In the budgetary times all local communities are facing, any savings in the procurement area can help fund maintaining services and jobs. And not to be cliched, even in the area of landscaping and maintenance, no stone should go unturned in the procurement of landscaping materials.

This includes mulch – a commodity that defines what makes something a commodity! Recently, Louisville, Kentucky-based eBridge (http://www.ebridgeglobal.com) helped a school district in Georgia with a buy for pine straw for its facilities. The bidding between the six pre-qualified suppliers was intense in the electronic bidding forum, as during the reverse auction, the six rival firms drove the school district’s price down, down, down. All told, after fifty-eight bids were placed and ten time extensions, the Georgia school district ended-up saving over 34% off their expected purchase price. Those dollar savings on mulch can now be freed-up to cover other expenses for the district, and with times being tight, this could help fund textbooks, educational programs, and even help retain a teacher or two!

So, how can your agency save money through reverse auctions? If you are the head of procurement for any government agency, no matter how big or how small, and your buying any commodity type item or service, from mulch to yes, computers and even wireless services, you should look into how the strategic use of reverse auctions can save your agency precious budgetary resources in these worrisome economic times. Contact us here at the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/) to learn more.


Reference: Do You Have The Edge?, July 6, 2010, http://www.ebridgeglobal.com/blog/?p=640

BIOGRAPHY

David C. Wyld (dwyld.kwu@gmail.com) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at http://wyld-business.blogspot.com/. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of his student’s publications regarding management concepts (http://toptenmanagement.blogspot.com/), book reviews (http://wyld-about-books.blogspot.com/) and international foods (http://wyld-about-food.blogspot.com/).


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Mulching for Dollars: Reverse Auctions Provide Savings Beyond The Garden Variety | Bizcovering


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