"Who is MiCTA?"

MiCTA is an organization whose roots began in telecommunications in the early eighties, and in the past several years has expanded program offerings based on Member requests. The organization represents all nonprofit entities including educational, governmental, libraries, health care, religious/charitable, and public sector with representation in all 50 states. MiCTA produces and publishes collaborative RFPs generating agreements that are made available to all Members.

 

Purchasing departments are continually being asked to do more with less, and more so now than in the past. One solution to this dilemma is using "buying consortiums" for commodity-type purchases. Unique to many consortiums, MiCTA’s collaborative procurement process is based on an "of the membership, by the membership, and for the membership" process. MiCTA programs are generated by the publication of a nationwide RFP that is competitive and fully defensible. Members are strongly encouraged to participate in the entire RFP process from development of the specifications, to evaluation and analysis of vendor responses, to submission of award recommendations.

MiCTA does not compete with or replace a Member’s purchasing professionals, but adds an additional resource to an already understaffed and under-budgeted department. Resulting programs assist Member institutions/organizations in reducing their overall procurement costs, allows reassigning of resources to high profile projects, and eliminates duplicate bidding efforts of the membership.

 

Members can and do continue to process individual commodity-type product / service RFPs based on their usage requirements. But, at what cost is it the best deal, and is the volume sufficient to influence the market or industry? Depending on the type of bid being issued, the cost to prepare, evaluate, and award will range from several hundred dollars to over $25,000 for a one-time purchase. MiCTA programs offer:

• Support for Member resources by collaborating with Members to contract for commodity type products and services that absorb 80% of the buyer’s time and reflects very little organizational cost savings.
• Aggregates Member demand, keeps prices competitive, and offers Buyers choices in the selection of both products / brands ad vendors.
• Value is defined as either "very best" (Endorsed) or "good" (Approved) overall as determined by the RFP Evaluation Committee.
• Influence on markets and industry trends is felt whenever Members stand together as one organization.
• Negotiation and administration of competitive agreements, which are considered living documents that add new technology as it becomes available, allows Members to define their own purchasing policies in the form of a Participation Agreement, and are made available at no additional charge to the membership.
• Growing support for the RFP development and evaluation process as shown in Member participation in the process and use of resulting programs.
• Strong presence when addressing vendor or manufacturer problems with 19,500 plus member organizations speaking as one voice.