Ohio schools turn to e-procurement amid education budget cuts
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Digital procurement solutions are helping one Ohio school district purchase supplies with greater accuracy and efficiency amid statewide budget cuts.
As students and teachers return to classrooms to ring in the new academic year, one Ohio school district is approaching the back-to-school season with its eyes set on procurement modernization and efficiency.
The Ohio legislature recently adopted a new budget plan that will cut the Southwest Local School District’s operating budget by nearly $3 million over the next two years, which represents about 6% of the district’s overall budget, according to district officials.
School staff are already “very conscious” of current budget restraints, said Roger McGregor, treasurer at SWLSD, and the district ranks in the top 10% of the state’s most financially efficient school districts. But a digital platform from government software provider Euna Solutions could further help schools more efficiently purchase supplies and monitor spending, he said.
SWLSD fully integrated Euna’s Marketplace and Invoicing modules into its current enterprise resource planning system last month, following preliminary results that show that the digital solutions have helped cut back on spending, manual workloads and inefficiencies throughout the procurement process.
Using the digital tool, SWLSD’s procurement approvals are 60% faster than the district’s traditional approach, which relied on school personnel digging through catalogs to find supplies they wanted, McGregor said. Staff would then submit requisitions to their secretary, who had to type up purchase orders for the treasury department to approve and send to the vendor.
The process “didn’t have much of a workflow” and “that obviously wasn’t very efficient,” McGregor said. The digital marketplace also improves the accuracy and efficiency between school purchasers and vendors by reducing the reliance of manual data entry, he explained.
Using the marketplace solution, school staff can electronically shop for supplies, and their purchase orders are automatically sent to vendors in the system. Employees access the marketplace with a single sign-on using their school email, making it relatively easy to onboard staff onto the platform, McGregor said.
“We did not have to do a lot of training … We put out some instructional documents, but it was so simple for staff members,” he explained. For instance, users can search for specific vendors or by product through the digital catalog.
“It’s just like shopping on Amazon,” he added. Once a staff member adds something to their cart, the digital tool leverages artificial intelligence to flag the same products at lower prices, if they’re available. The AI feature has helped SWLSD save 25% on purchases compared to baseline pricing.
Euna’s solution also includes an invoicing module, and the district processed 2,821 electronic invoices with the tool in 2024, McGregor said. The feature has helped eliminate the need for manual and paper-based monitoring, he explained, and it has enabled real-time tracking of payments.
Through the district’s ERP, officials can monitor spending behaviors, for instance, by vendor or individual school buildings to inform budget projections and allocations, which is crucial as schools navigate future financial restrictions, McGregor said.