Answer: You are right the devil is in the details. Too often when a major change like this is proposed stakeholders and legislators are overwhelmed by the revisions needed in the procurement statutes, computer automation requirements and the objections of procurement personnel who will lose their jobs. I maintain that the potential benefits far outweigh the difficulties in making the change. Here is my approach for centralized State Purchasing keep in mind this is a generalized approach which should be modified to fit a specific implementation.

1. Sell the Idea to key state legislators and purchasing and budgeting managers (stake holders). Try to work out a deal with Walmart for a delegation visit to their Bentonville Arkansas facility. What you want to accomplish is the development of a shared image of how the successful purchasing consolidation would look. Take along your top information processing and logistic personnel. Assign specific tasks for each participant to investigate and ask focused questions of Walmart personnel. When you get back have the delegation meet and develop the preliminary proposal.

2. Appoint a committee to rewrite and simplify the states obsolete and ambiguous procurement statues. Keep legislators informed of progress. This may take a few months but if this job is dumped on the state legislators you can guarantee failure.

3. Sell the idea of centralized statewide purchasing to the public provide some round numbers of saving to the state. Give some details of savings to be derived from volume purchases and the efficient delivery of goods to using organizations.

4. Start investigations of updated Purchasing systems capable of handling the volume of statewide purchases. Determine if new facilities are required for the automated systems and for purchasing negotiating rooms. Words of caution don’t let anyone sell you on a purchasing system that does not have a separate database coded in the Structured Query language (SQL). For more information on this see Reader Question 5. “Efficiency and automated Systems“.

5. Submit final proposal and budget with proposed revised procurement statutes to the state legislature. Do everything necessary to get a yes vote.

6. Get the purchasing facility and automated systems in place.

7. Start consolidating the old purchasing database into the new database. For information on how to do this see Article 21. “Centralized Purchasing- A Way to Balance State Budgets“.

8. Develop a logistics pull system similar to Walmart’s this may involve more automation but will be worth the investment. Walmart uses RFID wireless Tesco barcode readers to find out how they use them just walk into any Walmart store and ask them. You may want to try to modify your current delivery system to imitate Walmart’s. But this could cost you more than a new system.