Last month, a number of Cyberans attended the global National Research and Education Network (NREN) conference, TNC, which was held in the UK, and hosted by GÉANT — the pan-European data network for the research and education community.
At the event, presenters unveiled the accomplishments of an open cloud procurement project run on behalf of higher education and research organizations across 39 European countries, and facilitated by GÉANT. This was a massive undertaking, involving 13 people from eight different NRENs who evaluated 500 bids over the course of six months!
But what impressed attendees the most was the breakdown of economic benefits for individual members: the team estimated their total costs for creating and running the procurement to be €7 million, and the amount saved by members to be €210 million (approximately $11 million and $336 million CAD, respectively). That’s a 30x return on investment!
Here at Cybera, our ShareIT team has been running their own impressive procurement program for Alberta’s (and now Saskatchewan’s) education and municipal sectors for the past eight years. And while we can’t compare our program to GÉANT’s based on scale alone, I think we can make similar comparisons in terms of the return on investment for our members.
You see, the €210 million in savings highlighted by the European NREN team was not based on the negotiated discounts alone. It also included the time and personnel costs saved by institutions not having to run their own procurements.
This is probably one of the biggest benefits of the ShareIT procurement program, beyond the group discounts it has achieved. However, we have struggled to put a financial number on this benefit. How do you show the savings from reduced staff hours spent on a procurement project, and also the savings accumulated from having a higher quality procurement agreement in place?
Savings in time and resources
In fact, one of the largest costs in any procurement process is staff time. Developing RFPs, evaluating vendor responses, coordinating legal reviews, managing approvals, and negotiating contracts — this is a long process. For smaller municipalities or institutions with limited staff, this can take weeks or even months.
When the ShareIT community members come together to build a procurement project, this process is shared. The heavy lift is done once — by folks within the community who know exactly what their peer organizations need — and the results are distributed to everyone. Instead of each organization reinventing the wheel with their own procurement process, a single, well-vetted procurement serves the whole group.
“The time and work I spend on participating in the ShareIT working groups is literally nothing compared to the time and work we would have to do to do these RFPs on our own.” — Rene Ouellette, Northern Lakes College
Member organizations can opt-in to the final purchasing agreement, and benefit from the legwork that’s already been done. This gives staff time back in their day, time that can be redirected to implementing new tools — not just buying them.
“We have literally 150 jobs off the side of our desk on a regular basis and almost nothing is able to get removed from our plate — this is the exception. ShareIT takes so much work off our plate. Even if we did not see $1 in savings through the discounts, we would still use these agreements because of the massive amount of time and work it takes to do these RFPs on our own. Time is so precious to us, and time is what ShareIT gives back to us”. — Shane Lanz, Medicine Hat College
The value of shared knowledge
Another invaluable benefit (that is hard to quantify) is the shared expertise that comes with this program.
Every procurement process involves questions like: What technical requirements should be included? How do we evaluate vendor capabilities and risk? What service levels are reasonable? (Just to name a few.)
By pooling knowledge and experience from their own previous procurements, participants are able to build stronger contracts and improve outcomes. A large university’s IT director might bring cybersecurity expertise, while a municipality administrator can contribute lessons learned from managing a cloud migration. Together, they make the procurement stronger than it would be if one institution had built it alone.
There’s also the reduced risk factor. Cybera’s ShareIT team is there to ensure that the process is fair and legally compliant with public sector procurement regulations. This creates another level of peace of mind, particularly for individuals who are required to run these procurements on the side of their desk.
Beyond the shared expertise that goes into building the procurement, the ShareIT team has also fostered a community of collaboration that extends through the implementation and maintenance of the tools and services that have been purchased. Through our regular meetings and shared communication channels, members have an ongoing forum for peer-to-peer conversations about challenges and solutions.
This cross-sector network of learning continues to build value well after a contract is signed.
Creating value 30 times over
Across the Prairies, schools, post-secondary institutions, and municipalities are being asked to do more with less. Budgets are tight, technology is evolving faster than ever, and the need to modernize IT systems is growing. At the same time, individual organizations lack the time, staff, or specialized expertise needed to navigate complex procurement processes.
That’s where Cybera’s ShareIT program is making a difference.
This initiative is creating opportunities for IT teams to talk, learn from one another, and grow more efficient. This network, in turn, is sparking new ideas, solving common problems, and strengthening Alberta and Saskatchewan’s public sectors from the ground up.
Models like this offer a blueprint for how governments, educators, and community leaders can support one another, and deliver a multifold return on investment.