Newton Valley Public Schools - Issue Identification

Newton Valley Public Schools

Executive Summary

The procurement department of  Newton Valley Public Schools Organization has gone through a series of deceive changes , which in the  mid of mid of  a board members election  could definite set the pace for upcoming and innovative  procurement practices. This report will provide a description of every strategy that was executed by NVPS and I will outline key problems of every single project.

After analyzing major problems, I have provided 4 main ideas showing advantages and disadvantages for each of them.

As a result of this pivotal business implementation taken or lead by  Martin Humphries and Carole Schenck ,I am providing  recommendations for the future purchasing strategies and describe the details of every recommendation, when this options has to be used and what will be the benefits to the organization.

Issue Identification

Taking into consideration negative feedback from internal employees it became obvious that something is was implemented without considering details, from the 2 purchasing plans  that has been implemented  , I have identified  issues below, that may lead  into some type of mishap if they are not addressed on time .  

1. Different specs to buy

it was discovered that Newton Valley Public Schools were induced and lead by Redditch to buy computers that meet their specs, without taking to much into consideration NVPS needs.

1. Under the shadow of the decision maker

Since RSB were the key player and a larger organization, complains were received from internal employees regarding response time by RSB employees. All the focus were put into them, leaving NVPS in most cases neglected

1. Operating Costs

it was mentioned that it would be flat costs from each of the other boards.  This costs where unclear, and perfectly must be percentage wise in the future.

Environmental and Root Cause

 The last few years the Board of Trustees was cutting yearly budget of the NVPS and the following policy has resulted in some new cost-saving initiatives mostly from purchasing department at this organization.  

Every new procurement strategy used in this organization had problems that were mentioned above.

In the first scenario:  They have used a simple local network cooperative purchasing model that tends to be well-know practice for eliminating interests of a small purchasing parties that are involved in the cooperation. NVPS have never attended to any meeting with a vendor and none of the purchasing conditions were discussed with the vendor ,basically  the have accepted to be thrown to that deal, which basically was  a trial and error strategy , All the minor and major things have been discovered afterwards.

The second scenario was executed with more success, however uncontrolled costs minimized cost savings. It was due to the poor sourcing strategy implemented, the restricted accessibility to historical demand data  from the 2 school boards and the local village councils were basically unknown , which restricted the opportunity to forecast and perform a  proactively procurement strategy. Junior Buyer were already over capacity. In addition, fixed monthly fee for their service is not the best strategy when the purchasing amounts are increasing.