Procuring high-quality, low-cost hardware can be frustrating and challenging for small government organizations with limited IT staff. When a city police department found the bidding process for individual hardware vendors for each IT need was becoming costly and time-consuming, it reached out for help.
The police department had to thoroughly vet each and every vendor to ensure the technology met government requirements. But a low-bid approach can lead to many unknowns.
“When problems arose after a technology vendor won a bid, we often couldn’t get the hardware support we needed,” says the police department’s sergeant. “A vendor will promise the moon and the stars — and then we didn’t get much out of the relationship.”
The department needed a more reliable and efficient hardware procurement process.
Cost-effective procurement
The state’s municipal association introduced the police department to the OMNIA Partners (formerly U.S. Communities) purchasing program, a leading national cooperative purchasing alliance that provides world-class government procurement resources and solutions.
Through the OMNIA Partners program, the client connected with Insight Public Sector and was able to obtain low, government-contracted pricing on IT services and solutions. We also provided a single source for all of the department’s technology needs, eliminating the need for Request for Proposal (RFP) requirements.
Government purchasing, simplified
We helped the city police department procure Panasonic Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) at a reduced price by leveraging the OMNIA Partners contract. And, using OMNIA Partners’ lead public agency model drastically reduced the expense of preparing a bid and managing a contract — saving the city department significant time and money.