Procurement marketplace Pavilion has launched a tool designed to bring more diversity to the business of cooperative contracts for local and state governments.
The move comes after a rebranding earlier this year of the company, which was known as CoProcure, and nearly a year after the government technology and online marketplace provider raised $22 million in a Series A funding round.
The new “diversity filters” from Pavilion can help users of cooperative contracts find more local and diverse businesses and encourage national suppliers to work with those businesses, among other tasks.
Such contracts basically allow “piggybacking” on existing deals instead of requiring the creation of new arrangements, which backers say brings more efficiency to the often complex and time-consuming job of buying goods and services for public agencies. One of many examples of the process comes from GTY Technology Holdings and the state of Texas.
This launch is part of the grander Pavilion vision to build a robust search-based marketplace for state and local procurement, Mariel Reed, co-founder and CEO of Pavilion, told Government Technology.
“I think our bread and butter is search. There are so many obstacles suppliers face in selling to governments,” and better search can help with that never-ending task, she said. “There is a vast amount of information coming from many different sources.”
The tools offered by Pavilion help marketplace users find the particular procurement certifications that matter to them most, Reed said. For instance, one agency or jurisdiction might care more about, say, COVID-19 concerns, while other units of government might have different priorities.
“It’s much more personalized,” she said of the new filters.
Pavilion has more than 65,000 contracts available through its platform, of which one in four have diverse suppliers. The new filters are meant to allow quick and easy searches for cooperative contracts with diverse suppliers.
In a statement, Lourdes Coss, who was chief procurement officer for Houston and Cook County, Ill., explained how the process could ideally work via such filters. She said when using a national contract with Grainger, she worked with the supplier to find a local manufacturer during her tenure in Cook County.
“If a cooperative contract is used nationwide, it opens the door for a local business to expand their initial reach and sell all over the U.S.,” she said.
Thad Rueter writes about the business of government technology. He covered local and state governments for newspapers in the Chicago area and Florida, as well as e-commerce, digital payments and related topics for various publications. He lives in New Orleans.
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