The Fine Print

The Fine Print

The Newsletter of the Maryland Public Purchasing Association, Inc.

September/October 2007

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE-

Mark A. Pemberton, C.P.M., CPPB

Greetings, its summer time and the living is easy--easy for every one but us, “procurement” types. It seems like our workload increases as the weather gets warmer and the days get longer--did someone say “year-end” close? I hope you all had a safe and enjoyable summer and managed to get in some vacation time. Like the annual return of the swallows to Capistrano, the return of the school buses marks the end to another summer, much to the children’s dismay. Let’s look forward to the fall.

The big news from our home office in Columbia is the Reverse Trade Show, scheduled for October 16, 2007 at Martin’s West. I expect all the agencies and departments represented by MPPA to have signed up for booths by now. The members of the committee have been working extremely hard to bring this event together and we all owe them a big thank you. The best way to do that is through your participation! For further details, see the website or contact Debbie Meehan or Rose Harrell. You are encouraged to continue to market this event to your vendors. Remember, again you say thanks to the very hard working members of the committee, for their time and effort, and ensure the success of this event through your participation.

I’ll ask again, how are we doing in response to my earlier membership challenge? Let’s not forget our goal to increase membership by 10% this year.

Allow me a moment to thank the members of the MPPA Board and Directors for their continued good work. These hard working professionals continue to find the time to support the Association. I encourage everyone to join them and seek to become a Board member or Director. You will be glad you did. It truly is a rewarding experience. Let me remind everyone of the annual Buyer and Manager of the Year honors. Now is the time to submit your nominations. Take the time to recognize and reward someone deserving.

I’d like to personally welcome back to the ranks of State of Maryland procurement, the new Director of Procurement for the Department of General Services, a true professional who is no stranger to MPPA, my good friend, Mike Haifley. We look forward to Mike’s return to MPPA. Mike can be reached at .

Some words of wisdom courtesy of Groucho Marx, “I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it”.

Stay happy and I hope to see you soon.

Mark A. Pemberton, C.P.M., CPPB

SEPTEMBER 2007 MEETING OF THE MPPA GENERAL MEMBERSHIP

WHEN:Saturday, September 8, 2007

12:30 P.M. TO 5:30 P.M.

WHERE:Kurtz’s Beach

2070 Kurtz Avenue

Pasadena, Maryland

410-255-1280

COST:$40 for adults, $15 for children (6-10), free for kids under 6

Buffet Menu:

CRABSAssorted Salads

Fried ChickenCorn

Pit BeefCountry Beans

Pit HamWatermelon & Deserts

HamburgersBread, Rolls and butter

Hot Dogs

Beer, Soda, Iced Tea, Coffee

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Kurtz’s facility is located on the Chesapeake Bay and includes outdoor pavilions, playgrounds, music (DJ), and other activities.

NEXT MEETING IS AS FOLLOWS:

Thursday, November 8 @ The Rose Restaurant

R.S.V.P.:Please notify Facilities Chairperson, Brian Snyder, CPPO, by either telephone at (410) 263-7944, e-mail at , or fax at(410) 263-8120 if you plan to attend. Cost of the meeting is payable by cash or check at the door, or via credit through the web site at

Last year’s crab feast had 75 happy and well fed attendees! Last month’s meeting at Snyder’s had an attendance of 50.

Brian D. Snyder, CPPO

Facilities Chairperson

MEMBERSHIP

Darla H. Herbold, CPPO

MPPA warmly welcomes the following professional purchasing practitioners who were accepted into membership in August 2007 by the MPPA Executive Board:

New Members Presented for Membership

Suzan K. Hofmann

Fiscal Assistant

Baltimore County Information Technology

400 Washington Avenue, Room 33

Towson, MD 21204

Phone: (410) 887-3224

Fax: None provided

Email:

Responsible for information technology goods and services

Mike Yeager

Procurement Analyst

Department of Budget & Management

7227 River Drive Road (home address)

Baltimore, MD 21219

Phone: (410) 477-4969

Fax: None provided

Email:

Responsible for information technology and telecommunications goods and services

Michael Howard

Procurement Analyst

Department of Budget & Management

14610 Monmouth Drive (home address)

Burtonsville, MD 20866

Phone: (301) 847-1527

Fax: None provided

Email:

Responsible for Information technology hardware and software

Teresa M. Barnes

Agency Procurement Specialist Supervisor

Department of Health & Mental Hygiene

10 Forest Rock Ct. (home address)

Baltimore, MD 21228

Phone: (410) 747-8883

Fax: None provided

Email:

Responsible for services, compliance, small business

Carmina Perez-Fowler

Chief Procurement Officer

Maryland Department of Transportation

7201 Corporate Center Drive

P.O. Box 548

Hanover, MD 21076

Phone: (410) 865-1121

Fax: (410) 865-1388

Email:

Responsible for all MDOT procurement

Colleen Skahill

Richard Riffe

Linda Ingram-Capers

Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service

Procurement Division

101 Monroe Street, 12th Floor

Rockville, MD 20850

Donna DiCerbo, CPPO

Rene Larkins

Maryland Aviation Administration

P.O. Box 8766

BWI Airport, MD 21240

Prepared by:Darla H. Herbold, CPPO

Membership Chair 2007

RECOGNITION REPORT

Pam Jones, CPPO, CPPB, MBA, CPM

Announcements

Please remember, if you’d like to forward information to be published (e.g., recent certification, promotion, etc.), please contact me at .

Congratulations

1. William B. Irish, FNIGP, CPPO, C.P.M., 2001 NIGP President, City Purchasing Agent
   City of Baltimore Purchase Bureau, MD, received the Albert H. Hall Memorial Award during the 2007 NIGP Annual Forum.
2. Pam Jones, CPPO, CPPB, MBA, C.P.M.*, MPPA Recognition Chairperson, was recently promoted from a Senior Procurement Specialist to a Manager II, in the Montgomery County, MD, Office of Procurement.

*Certified Public Manager

In Memoriam

Our deepest sympathy goes to Kristy Heim, MPPA Chairperson of Information and Research, and her family for the recent loss of Kristy’s husband, James Heim. The family requests no flowers. Memorial contributions may be made to Health, Education and Resources, Inc., 53 Numer Road, Newport, PA, 17074; and Hospice of Baltimore, Attn: Development Office, 6601 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, 21204.

New Certification/Recertification

If you have recertification information or other certification information you would like to share or recognize, please let me know.

CONGRATULATIONS to the following individuals:

New CPPB/CPPO (report from NIGP)

1. Theresa Ammons, CPPB, Lead Agency Procurement Specialist , Maryland Department of Health & Mental Hygiene (July 2007-New CPPB)
2. Carol E. Wilson, CPPB, Procurement Associate II,Carrol County Health Dept/DHMH (August 2007-New CPPB)

Recertification News

N/A

Take Advantage of Educational Aide Opportunities:

Currently, there are two types of educational aid available to members, as follows:

(1)The Stanley D. Zemansky Scholarship Program and

(2)The Certification Exam Reimbursement Program.

Please visit the MPPA website to view the instructions and application for each.

Reverse Trade Show

The Reverse Trade Show is fast approaching and so is the deadline to register as an exhibitor. The RTS committees have been working very hard to ensure a successful event but we can’t do it alone – we need your help. Many MPPA member agencies are already registered but there are still many who have not. The deadline for exhibitor registration is October 1, 2007. If your agency has not yet signed on to be a part of this important day, we strongly encourage you to do so. Your purchasing association depends on you to make this event one to remember.

Sponsorships and vendor registrations are doing well but we would like to see many more. MPPA members are asked to encourage vendors throughout the community to register for the Reverse Trade Show. Sponsors are listed on the RTS webpage – have a look to see if any of your vendors are supporting this event –

We look forward to seeing everyone on October 16, 2007 at Martin’s West.

Deborah Meehan and Rose Harrell

RTS Co-chairs

Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Purchasing

Awarded the Achievement of Excellence in Procurement

by the National Purchasing Institute

For the third year in a row Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Purchasing has been awarded the Achievement of Excellence in Procurement by the National Purchasing Institute. This prestigious award is earned by those organizations that demonstrate excellence by obtaining a high score based on standardized criteria. The criteria are designed to measure innovation, professionalism, productivity, e-procurement, and leadership attributes of the procurement organization. It is now the standard benchmark for excellence in public and non-profit procurement.

The AEP is sponsored by the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO), the National Association of Educational Buyers (NAEB), the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing (NIGP), the Florida Association of Public Purchasing Officers (FAPPO), the California Association of Public Purchasing Officers (CAPPO) and founding sponsor the National Purchasing Institute (NPI), Associate sponsors are the Airport Purchasing Group (APG), Texas Purchasing Management Association (TPMA), The Innovation Groups (IG), and U.S. Communities.

The National Purchasing Institute, the public sector affiliate of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), exists to promote the achievement of excellence in governmental and institutional procurement through education, certification, professional development and networking of its members and other professionals associated with public sector procurement and supply management. The National Purchasing Institute (NPI), founded in 1968, is designed to establish cooperative relationships among its members for the development of efficient purchasing methods and practices in the areas of governmental, educational, and institutional procurements.NPI affiliated with the Institute for Supply Management (then called the National Association of Purchasing Management) in 1990. Founded in 1915, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) is one of the most respected educational associations in the United States.The mission of ISM is to provide national and international leadership in purchasing and materials management, particularly in the areas of education, research and standards of excellence.

Association of School Business Officials of Maryland and the District of Columbia

The Association of School Business Officials of Maryland and the District of Columbia is a nonprofit professional organization whose purpose is to provide programs and services that promote the highest standards of school business practices through professional development, recognition, and the effective management of available resources. Our vision is simple, to promote high-quality, exemplary school business practices, professional development, and communications to school business officials to ensure the effective and efficient delivery of quality support services to educational communities which contributes to a measurable improvement in student performance.

Our new Educational Supplies On-line site’s been up since February and continues to see a growing number of our ASBO MD & DC members log-on to check it out. Many of you have had the opportunity to use these same eCommerce Suite catalogs with your Title V funds. ASBO MD & DC would now like to make these on-line catalogs available to you and your schools all year around. You can now have access to over 35 catalogs and over 450,000 line items through membership in ASBO MD & DC. You can now purchase numerous curriculum items and office supplies at significant discounts with any credit card you choose.

Since reporting to you in March about the new system features implemented, we have been making progress on other fronts:

• Many new, competitively awarded contracts have been put in place by Baltimore County and will soon be available on the ASBO catalog, including Office Max, Staples and CDW.

• A single sign-on feature is in the works, whereby our members will be able to access the catalog directly from the ASBO web site without having to login a second time. In fact, we are collocating the ASBO member database with the OrderHouse catalog database to gain many other efficiencies and capabilities.

• We have recently signed a 3-year contract with OrderHouse, our catalog technology provider, to fix the cost of this service over that period and to gain their commitment to continue to enhance the platform as new requirements emerge. We’re very excited about this relationship.

Online purchasing allows school systems to browse online customized catalogs and automatically routes orders to the vendor. Online purchasing is cheaper than traditional approaches, because electronic processing of purchase orders costs less than paper processing and frees up valuable buyer and salesperson time for more productive activities. It is more convenient and faster than traditional paper-based purchasing, virtually eliminate processing errors, and provides users with the ability to browse the product/service list, create a requisition, and resume their work without expending time and effort searching for missing information or tracking down specific people.

eProcurement can also dramatically lower administrative and operational costs by reducing requisition cycle time and administrative bureaucracy, reduce transaction costs per purchase order by 50 to 90%, enable paper-less transactions. It will also increase leverage with suppliers by improving control and communication with preferred vendors, negotiate better volume discounts, better reporting, elimination of costs associated with off-contract or “maverick” buying. It will provide employee self-service by automating routing and approval process, real-time product and inventory information, purchasing via virtual catalogs and content/transaction hubs.

Ordering online allows for more than browsing products and prices. The aim is to provide a one-stop shopping mall for absolutely everything a school district needs, including equipment, supplies, and services. Our eProcurement shopping platform is designed to harness the self-service power of the Internet enabling our users to make purchases online from pre-negotiated contracts and supplier catalogs. In our judgment, we could implement this new technology quickly, easily and inexpensively. Most importantly, as our educational budgets continue to get squeezed, the process improvements afforded by eCommerce Suite has resulted in considerable hard dollar savings, which allows us to assure taxpayers that they are truly getting the “best bang for their buck.” With our shopping platform we can eliminate the backlog in purchasing and accounts payable and dramatically lessened the time needed for order processing and payment.This system also eliminates the practice ofplacing large orders at the beginning and end of the school year. School personnel are able to easily order supplies as the need is anticipated and have confidence that they will be delivered in a timely fashion.

Because our eProcurement shopping platform enables thecampus and office staff to order directly from a workstation at work or at home, delivery of supplies can and normally does occur within 24 to 96 hours and the vendors receive their payments within 24 to 48 hours after shipping. Because of our quick payments to our vendors, through our eCommerce Suite system, we can reduce our shipping costs from an average of 10% to 15% to anywhere from 4% to 7% currently.

Comments from suppliers and educators are overwhelmingly positive. Suppliers feel that they “have better control of the product needed and appreciate being paid quickly” and educators “appreciate the ability to order at any time and place and receive the product in days rather than weeks or months.” Since we limit our purchasing to preferred suppliers and contracts, eCommerce Suite eliminates the technical and financial barriers to participating in an electronic catalog program, thus enabling small organizations to participate. The centralized marketplace enforces contract compliance. This new system makes it easy for school personnel to compare and select products. They can view detailed product information at the lowest prices available.

The success of this program will allow our office to return valuable resources to the classroom. If we can continue to reduce the cost of doing business in a significant way, the reallocation of resources would mean that the principals could spend more time developing curriculum, mentoring young teachers, and observing the development of their students rather than signing purchase orders or searching through catalogs for the supplies they need for their campuses. There is no longer an infinite amount of money available to education rather there is a finite amount which must be utilized by the most efficient and effective means available. If anyone ever wants to know what eProcurement is about, this is what it's about right here.

We have joined the US Communities consortium, a national consortium involving several hundred local governmental entities across the country. We have linked to our web page the electronic catalogs of Office Depot, Corporate Express, BSN Sports, School Specialty and Grainger. We will also have Staples, Office Max, Lakeshore Learning, CDW, Budgetext, and Follett. Others will be added as we conclude negotiations to add their catalogs. Rest assured all of these catalogs are national, statewide, or BCPS approved catalogs. We can add your catalogs as well, just let us know.

We were glad to see so many of you stop by the booth at the ASBO MD & DC Spring Conference. If you haven’t already done so, please give our shopping platform a try!