Unlocking the Value of Cooperative Contracts with SOVRA and Pavilion
mai 14, 2025Cooperative contracts are powerful, but only if you can find and use them.
Despite the growing adoption of cooperative purchasing, many government agencies still struggle with access, validation, and compliance. The result? Procurement teams often waste time and resources creating new solicitations for goods and services that have already been competitively bid on through existing cooperative contracts; they just don’t know they’re available.
Now, thanks to a new integration between SOVRA and Pavilion, agencies can unlock the full potential of cooperative contracts directly from within their sourcing workflow.
The True Cost of Starting from Scratch
Running a new RFP is more expensive than most realize. The RFP Tracking Project by NCPP found that even a non-complex solicitation takes over 43 personnel hours, while complex bids average 138+ hours. Orange County, CA, tracked the cost of awarding a five-year contract and found that the procurement process alone cost over $86,000 in staff time.
That’s time and taxpayer money that could be redirected toward more strategic efforts, especially when cooperative contracts already exist to fill the same need.
The Untapped Power of Cooperative Contracts
Cooperative procurement allows multiple public entities, such as municipalities, school districts, and nonprofits to buy through shared agreements. These contracts often come with better pricing, built-in compliance, and pre-vetted suppliers.
As detailed in the Strategic Use of Cooperative Procurement report by NIGP and NCPP, cooperative agreements provide:
- Time and resource savings by eliminating repetitive bid processes
- Cost efficiency through aggregated purchasing power
- Built-in documentation for transparency and audit-readiness
- Emergency procurement flexibility for urgent or last-minute needs
- Strategic alignment with goals like supplier diversity and sustainability
But these advantages only matter if buyers can easily discover and act on cooperative opportunities.
The Disconnect: Siloed Access, Slower Procurement
In many agencies, cooperative contracts are managed outside core procurement systems, leading procurement staff to manually search third-party portals or PDFs, contact other agencies for documentation, and validate contract usage policies offline.
When clarity isn’t quickly achieved, they often initiate new solicitations. These disconnected processes consume time, cause delays, and frequently result in duplicated efforts, even when suitable contracts already exist.
The Solution: Pavilion + SOVRA = Cooperative Intelligence in Action
SOVRA’s new integration with Pavilion closes the gap between intention and action. By embedding Pavilion’s expansive library of cooperative contracts directly into the SOVRA Connect platform, procurement professionals gain:
- Intelligent search across hundreds of publicly bid cooperative agreements
- Real-time documentation to validate compliance and eligibility
- No more duplication, delays, or disconnected workflows
- Built-in transparency, helping meet procurement policy and audit standards
Procurement and Finance Teams Win Together
SOVRA’s integration with Pavilion transforms procurement into a strategic advantage by embedding cooperative contract access directly into the project initiation process. This streamlines sourcing, reduces redundant efforts, and accelerates timelines.
The integration enhances compliance with built-in audit trails, supports budget optimization through volume-based pricing, and promotes centralized purchasing to curb rogue spending. Additionally, it enables agencies to align procurement with social impact goals, ensuring faster, more transparent, and fiscally responsible outcomes.