As a public sector organization, your mission goes far beyond serving the interests of employees, shareholders, or customers. While there are no venture capitalists or corporate investors pressuring you for immediate results and aggressive returns on their money, your constituents are just as demanding. Because you serve a broader community—seeing to the interests of the common good—and your capital comes out of the pockets of taxpayers. As a result, your mission incorporates an understood obligation to serve public interests with care and to spend tax dollars wisely.
Technology changes rapidly, offering new capability and innovative solutions that can help you do your job better. New digital learning tools and techniques continue to emerge, improving the quality and personalization of education as adoption increases. More self-service applications and cloud services are available that can increase operational efficiency and improve customer service. And advancements in data sharing and analytics can increase collaboration between agencies and improve social services. While new technology opens the door to new services and improved outcomes, it also renders products purchased just a few years ago obsolete—quickly.
Replacing aging technology and implementing new solutions takes time and money. And getting the best price on new products can be tricky. Pitting manufacturers and resellers against each other is the only way to be certain you’re getting the best value. But by the time you create a lengthy, complicated bid document, post it publicly for weeks to comply with state laws and regulations, evaluate the multitude of responses, and finally make an award, your forward momentum slows down dramatically.
Existing purchasing contracts can help you avoid the time-consuming and expensive process of creating and managing your own bids. By adopting a state-approved contract, such as GSA or NASPO, you can work with authorized vendors or their agents to architect technology solutions and purchase products without going through the arduous process of creating, evaluating, and awarding your own bids. But keep in mind, not all contracts are the same. To ensure you’re getting the best price, make sure the contract vehicle you use is competitively-bid.
What Is PEPPM?
As stated on their website, “PEPPM is a technology bidding and purchasing program operated by the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit (CSIU) based in Milton, Pennsylvania. The program goes to bid for technology products and makes bid-protected pricing available to K-14 schools and agencies, libraries, four-year colleges and universities, government agencies, and other non-profit organizations.”
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Unlike some contracts, PEPPM is competitively-bid. Manufacturers and resellers compete against each other to be selected, and they know it. This ensures that the award goes to the lowest bidder who is responsive to the bid terms and conditions and who has demonstrated they are capable of effectively serving the schools and agencies. As such, you can work confidently with the service provider on the contract to develop your solution, select the products you want, and generate a purchase order.
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Buyers like PEPPM because it saves them time and money. PEPPM aggregates demand across thousands of buyers, resulting in better pricing than sole-bid efforts can provide, and there is no maximum spend limitation. In fact, PEPPM has provided more than $500 million in savings while exceeding more than $1.8 billion in sales since the program started in 1982.
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In addition, PEPPM is easy to use. Buyers have access to hundreds of product lines—all awarded to the lowest responsible bidder—and can place orders quickly and easily without the cost and delay associated with local bid development and award. Moreover, buyers can purchase directly from the awarded vendor, or a vendor-designated reseller or agent, giving the buyer flexibility in choosing who they work with while ensuring they receive a bid protected price for the product.
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Maybe the best news about PEPPM is that it’s available across the country. While the program began—and operated solely for many years—in Pennsylvania, buyers from other states can take advantage of the program. About 10 years ago, the CSIU partnered with Epylon Corporation to expand their reach to California. Today—through that continued partnership—the program is available nationally, and buyers in more than 40 states use PEPPM to make technology purchases.
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Years of Experience with the Program
At ePlus, we have been serving the technology needs of public sector organizations through PEPPM since 1999. With more than 15 years of experience operating within the program, we are uniquely positioned to deliver competitively-priced solutions.
As announced in our
press release, we hold many exclusive PEPPM product line awards, covering a range of core focus areas including network infrastructure, data center, storage, and security from leading manufacturers such as Cisco, Citrix, Lenovo, Palo Alto, Pure Storage, and more. Beyond our direct PEPPM awards, we also have been named as an authorized contract agent for other products including Barracuda, Dell, Epson, FireEye, HP, Liebert, Microsoft, NetApp, ViewSonic, VMware, and others.
PEPPM is a competitively-bid contract that’s easy to use and can save you time and money. If you’re not familiar with PEPPM, check it out at
www.peppm.org. We think you’ll like what you find.
