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Many executives in the public sector know how OMNIA Partners can help them achieve their agency’s procurement goals. The firm is an ally to purchasing officials; it provides its members with access to group purchasing contracts with leading national suppliers.

All OMNIA Partners members have access to the firm’s spend visibility and analytics solution, says Denise Woodside, executive vice president, Operations and Digital Strategy at OMNIA Partners. She explains how it helps procurement teams make more strategic buying decisions: “With OMNIA Partners' one-of-a-kind spend visibility tool, members can target categories where they have a significant dilution in spend and an increase in complexity across suppliers in a given category. As a result, they’re able to consolidate their procurement efforts to preferred contracts.”

She adds that the solution allows members to look at their organization’s spending holistically. “Members can collaborate with OMNIA Partners and our subject matter experts (SMEs) to consolidate suppliers, ensure contract compliance, etc. Our spend visibility solution is the perfect introduction into OMNIA Partners OPUS, as many purchases can then be executed within the OPUS ecommerce platform. Members who utilize OPUS will also gain full visibility into their spending on the platform through our reporting tools.”

Woodside notes that having a holistic view of spending can be a differentiator when it comes to strengthening procurement processes and implementing strategic practices. “OMNIA Partners’ spend visibility and analytics tools are designed to help procurement teams do just that so they can better understand and align their purchasing process to their organization’s objectives. With OMNIA Partners’ Spend Visibility solution, purchasing departments can easily spot categories where they are spending significant amounts of money but not leveraging an OMNIA Partners agreement. Once armed with that information, they can utilize OPUS to bring that spending onto a compliant contract and drive additional value.”

According to Woodside, here’s another valuable asset available to OMNIA Partners members: “OMNIA Partners’ dedicated subject matter experts are able to identify custom solutions that will work best for individual organizations’ purchasing needs. Our SMEs partner with members to help them make more informed decisions that align with their procurement and overall organizational objectives. Within OPUS, for example, members have access to the QuickConnect feature, which allows them to immediately connect with an SME who is familiar with both public sector and nonprofit purchasing at hundreds of suppliers.”  

Woodside offers an example of how OMNIA Partners’ subject matter experts can identify custom solutions for local government buyers: “OMNIA Partners worked with Douglas County, Neb.’s Community Mental Health Center to identify an affordable and flexible electronic health records (EHR) system that would fit within their budget and help them refresh an outdated data management system.”

Woodside explains that Douglas County used an OMNIA Partners’ cooperative contract to purchase the Netsmart system to update their data management setup. Her conclusion: “These initiatives have helped the county avoid the administrative bottlenecks they had been experiencing.”

OMNIA Partners members can consult with SMEs in the following categories:

• Food
• Maintenance, repair and operations (MRO); and facilities
• IT and telecom
• Furniture
• HR and contingent workforce
• Freight and logistics

No question, OMNIA Partners members achieve both hard and soft benefits when they leverage the firm’s spend visibility data and consolidate their spending to preferred contracts. Woodside explains: “Through quick and consistent refreshes of their overall spend data, we can help members measure their progress toward consolidation, reduce troublesome tail spend and increase efficiency across the organization.” Tail spend is defined as ad hoc spending and uncategorized purchases from suppliers that are low in frequency, volume or value.

OMNIA Partners strives to develop innovations in strategic procurement. Woodside says her firm will continue to work to enhance its offerings, including OPUS, an ecommerce platform. With OPUS, public sector agencies get access to hundreds of competitively solicited, publicly awarded OMNIA Partners contracts.

“On OPUS, in particular, user experience is of the utmost importance. In the year ahead, we’ll continue to collect and respond to feedback on OPUS from our members and partners so that the platform will evolve as their needs change. Features will be enhanced and updated to reflect their feedback. Those changes will include but are not limited to providing additional product enhancements and categories, offerings and contracts.”

She points to the lasting advantages that OMNIA Partners members can achieve: “All our members, from small businesses to universities to state and local governments, can benefit from implementing strategic procurement practices that enable them to do more with less, saving both time and money that can be redirected back into their organizations.”