Season 2 Episode 4: Creating a value chain through purchasing

Reshaping purchasing to be better stewards

Multnomah County is shifting from a traditional supply chain to a value-driven approach that prioritizes sustainability, supports local businesses, and addresses community needs.

“We strive to create a value chain that benefits everyone involved, from local vendors to the environment,” says Shawn Postera, Sustainable Purchasing Coordinator at Multnomah County.

The episode highlights how Multnomah County’s collaboration with Amazon Business evolved from addressing urgent needs during emergencies to supporting long-term, community-focused initiatives. Shawn shares how the county tackles large-scale projects and meets diverse priorities: delivering essential supplies to underserved residents, boosting local businesses, and promoting sustainability.

Shawn highlights three key strategies for success:

• Empowering employees with tools to make value-driven purchasing decisions
• Using technology to track progress and meet sustainability targets
• Partnering with certified and eco-conscious suppliers to align with community values

As Shawn states, “We want to ensure that what we’re purchasing supports the overall health and success of our community.”

Transcript:

This has been lightly edited for clarity. 

[00:00:29 - 00:00:56]
Kelly:
Welcome to the Smart Business Buying podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Rogers. On today's inside scoop, I'm joined by Shawn Postera, sustainable purchasing coordinator at Multnomah County. We'll look at how the county is reshaping, purchasing, moving from our traditional supply chain to our more holistic value chain that supports local vendors, centers on community needs, and reflects their commitment to being responsible stewards of public funds.

Shawn, we are excited to have you here.

[00:00:56 - 00:00:58]
Shawn:
Kelly, thank you, for having me here.

[00:00:58 - 00:01:07]
Kelly:
Of course. To start, can you share what makes Multnomah County, purchasing so unique? What is the mission and what kind of work, does the county do for its residents?

[00:01:07 - 00:02:03]
Shawn:
We have a focus on sustainability, and we've spent time working with our community on defining what sustainability means so that we're not only reflecting, what the community wants in our in our values and how we define it, but we allow them to have access to, guiding us into how we buy our goods and services and how we buy our goods and services is that we want to first look at what is going to create a better value here locally, and then throughout our global markets, because we do know that we can't purchase everything locally.

We don't produce everything locally. So what we want to strive to do is help create that value chain, and that we want everyone throughout this value chain to be treated fairly, and we want our environment to be also considered as goods are produced.


[00:02:03 - 00:02:12]
Kelly:
That's great, Shawn, and tell us specifically about your role. You know, how do you and your team really support the county's mission and focus on sustainability?

[00:02:12 - 00:03:32]
Shawn:
So I, nested in central procurement or central purchasing. And what we try to do is we look at the suite of options out there for purchasing, and we know that we try to, bring on catalogs like Amazon that offer us a way to have guided buying that guides employees to look at all the different, values that we have.

So if it's small businesses, if it's a larger business, or if it's a B Corp or any sort of certification, we want that upfront. And what we try to do is empower the employees to look at all of these values and what is most important at the time of buying. So we empower them through using, tools like Amazon to help us get to a better value, where we can fairly compete with all of the other catalogs, is really critical in us finding the best products at the best time, because I work a 9 to 5 job, but I work with people that are working at three in the morning at a homeless shelter, or they're interrupting human trafficking, and it's 5 a.m. I'm not always there, but if I can help set up a catalog really well, I don't have to be there at 5 a.m.. I can rely on the tools to be there.

[00:03:32 - 00:03:51]
Kelly:
It sounds like you, your organization has undergone a fair amount of, you know, digital optimization and digital transformation when it comes to procurement. You know, take us back to kind of when the county started looking at this new purchasing approach in a new way. So what led to that shift and kind of what are some of the benefits?

[00:03:51 - 00:07:07]
Shawn:
It was very hard for us to track packages. It was very hard for us to track what they were spending and help them buy something better. So the first piece was getting employees to get on the Amazon business and start ordering from there so that we could have accountability. In 2010, we brought on an e-procurement catalog that we call the MultCo marketplace.

I always call it Internal Amazon, because it's where we go when you need to buy anything. So all employees shop there first. And from there, that's where we have all the catalogs fairly compete. And in that same year we onboarded a policy, a sustainable procurement policy that said that 25% of your specific locations for a purchase have to be dedicated to sustainability. So with those two things coming on board, we really started looking at how can we utilize an online platform to have this guided buying experience and make it really easy for an employee to see what's going on in a supply chain?

And at the time of purchase, we went to an on time purchase. instead of having warehouses of stuff because we want like the best products at the best time without having to warehouse it, which is why we like products like Amazon or the other catalogs at warehouse at for us. And we just click the button and get it when we need it.

And that means that we can also look at the most culturally responsive and specific products at the time, because not every individual needs the same thing. So if we're serving one population, we're really going to look at what their needs are today and then be able to shop for it.

So when we started setting up the tools, we started with that. And then when I, took over and embarked on the project are really how can we measure it in? And this was just in 2022 when I started working with Amazon. And now it's looking at all of our catalogs and saying, how can we measure our values?

And we've had a lot of success in being able to measure our values with Amazon. So it's it's one of the suite of offers we have to our employees, like you can purchase from here. And what we've seen is that we're able to not only see that we're, buying from more certified firms, were buying from more local firms because just because it's a law firm doesn't mean it's certified.

And then we're also able to purchase from firms that have the sustainability eco labels and certifications we are seeking to promote and endorse and support. So that is the bigger picture of what we're doing, and we've been able to use it on Amazon and to really promote them so that when an employee at two in the morning needs something, they can go to our local marketplace, see what's available, have it fairly competed with Amazon and and see that, oh, this product here is the one I want it has the values I want like because working with the functionality in Amazon we're able to promote them. And so they can see oh this is a certified firm. This has the eco label. We want and it's the product we want.

[00:07:07 - 00:07:36]
Kelly:
That's great. And also it's probably nice that, you know, your county doesn't actually have to manage those certification programs. And so you really just have to worry about communicating to your employees, hey, we want you to have this kind of preferred behavior and looking for those, sustainable products and suppliers.

Talk to me a little bit about that 25% goal. You know, are you tracking that using Amazon Business Analytics or other analytics software? And, and how does that data help you inform and sort of track better, purchasing behavior?

[00:07:36 - 00:08:38]
Shawn:
Well, we usually just track it at the time we contract with a supplier. So when we, contract with Amazon, with our, Omnia partners contract, it's a cooperative contract. All other podcast for co-ops. We say, great, now we have this, this supplier that we know has what we want. We they can offer the things we want after that, then we that meets at least 25% of the criteria of what we're looking for.

So that's how that works. So it's like, oh, you've already passed our sniff test. Like you've got what we want. And then after that it's really developing it. And it can go beyond 25% of what we're purchasing in that catalog to be the criteria we're looking for. So it's really we just compete it once and then we after we get the catalog on board, then we're like, let's keep promoting it, let's grow it.

Let's have the specific products and services we buy from it. It can exceed that. And that's really what we're looking for.

[00:08:38 - 00:08:50]
Kelly:
That's great. And kind of looking bigger picture. What are some of the main categories that you're buying from Amazon Business today. I'm sure it really runs the gamut, but what are some of the top things that your buyers are buying?

[00:08:50 - 00:10:27]
Shawn:
That's a really great question because we have, a lot of different catalogs and we've been relying on Amazon more and more, and that this really started during the Covid 19 response and pandemic because things were not available. So we really started to rely and saw a lot of opportunity, these and Amazon to get products that people needed.

So we buy a lot of, culturally responsive and specific products, personal care products for, the clients we serve. We purchase a lot of, I would call it emergency response or items for people that are facing the most disparities in the moment. So it's the personal care products. It's clothing. It's things they need right now. We also do a lot of planning for bigger items, like we've been able to utilize a lot of Amazon, offerings such as the quote system, so that we can go and that saves us staff time. And so instead of a staff person doing that, we are relying on our contract with Amazon to help us do some of that work for us.

And so that we can see what is available out there. And then we have time to think about it too, because of the allows us a lot of time to come back to our stakeholders, our to our interests or parties and say, hey, we've got this quote from Amazon, can we buy these generators? Is this really what we're looking for?

And as our staff is being reduced over year after year, I mean, being able to utilize these tools and get a fair price with our values is really important.

[00:10:27 - 00:10:41]
Kelly:
Shawn, talk to me a little bit more about request for quote. I know that's a system that we have at Amazon Business that allows you to really kind of estimate out different types of, of products and suppliers. How do you use request for quote and tell me about some of the benefits.

[00:10:41 - 00:11:58]
Shawn:
We've empowered our, department staff and our program staff to decide when they want to use request for quote and we have done that because we don't know what's going on in their daily work every day.

And being, a county that works 24 over seven and has staff working all of the time, we don't know everything that's going on so giving them the ability to say, I want to do a request for, quote, having them get that and then bring it back alleviated a burden of research?

You know, it's relying on a contract to help us do a critical service of market research. And then we're able to make a decision based on that. And we have the time to do that.
And it allowed, the people that are working, out there in the programs, the ability to develop the specifications that they need because oftentimes I'm removed from it. I'm not working with them. So when they work with an Amazon business rep on a request for, quote, they're asking them all the procurement questions that we would so we're able to say through this contract, we are expanding our procurement staff.

[00:11:58 - 00:12:19]
Kelly:
That's great. So it's sort of that you have that built in compliance even for these sort of custom orders, which is nice.

Could you share maybe an example of how some of your, you're buying strategies and I know your county has some really unique needs. So how have you, helped to sort of support some of these programs for low income residents, maybe people with disabilities or some of your emergency management efforts?

[00:12:19 - 00:13:51]
Shawn:
We are really looking at the business giving program for, a way for us to help serve our clients, because currently one of the offerings we have is a staff person.

If we need to buy goods for someone, we give them a gift card. And with that, there's a lot that can go wrong. They can lose the gift card. It's staff time of the staff going out, picking up the client, giving them the gift card, bringing them to the stores to buy the stuff. But with business giving, we streamline that process by.

We're able to send a link out to a client. We can handpick the products so we can then use our sustainability values. And here's some better products we want you to look at. And it can be anything from clothing for school to food to other supplies you might need for a household. And we can handcraft that list, send it out to them.

They can pick it so the client feels like I have some autonomy here. I can pick what I want from this list, and then we have options for how the client works with our county staff and how they get it delivered. Maybe it maybe it's a handle from a county staff person so they feel like, oh, we're still involved.

The county just didn't push us off on the Amazon business. Or it could be that we have it delivered to a site because it's too far away. We have clients that because of whatever situation there, and they might be five counties away, but we're still trying to help serve them so we can have it delivered out to them, and they still feel connected with the services we have.

[00:13:51 - 00:14:24]
Kelly:
That's great. It's such a useful tool. And I think my favorite thing about business giving is that if the recipient doesn't use the gift or the item, or doesn't redeem for the item, that those funds go back to you, to the county, which is nice. It's again, much better than something like a gift card, which is just a one time thing.

It's a much more of a program that can be ongoing, and you can use either seasonally or throughout the year, for lots of different needs. And it really can involve the full selection of Amazon business. And so, it can help you in sort of these really unique needs that your county has.

[00:14:24 - 00:15:09]
Shawn:

I think it's really alleviated a lot of staff time. And I can see that in the future as we have a reduction in staff, going to be really critical to find these offerings out there that help us still stay connected with our clients, but also offer what they need. And this really can help them do it. And, from our clients, they've really they've felt very included in this process.

You know, online buying is really it's really popular. And people like it. They like it when they click the button they can get the dopamine hit like, oh, I get to pick what I clothing, I want it. And then they get it delivered to them and they feel like, oh, I'm more and more involved. I'm like everyone else in the world.

That's important. That's really valuable.

[00:15:09 - 00:15:39]
Kelly:
Talk to me a little bit about your buyers. Just around the county and all of these different areas. You know, how simple is it to onboard new buyers? On to, Amazon business? I'm sure that they they have a choice of catalogs they can purchase from.

Do you feel like your buyers are generally, you know, or do they quickly understand sort of that intuitive, buying experience with an Amazon business? I'm sure it's very familiar to their their personal Amazon buying. Do you feel like that's a time savings for you?

[00:15:39 - 00:16:27]
Shawn:
I think it is a time savings for me, but I do think that there has been hurdles we've had to overcome with Amazon Business because our employees don't. And other jurisdictions I've talked to don't understand the benefits from Amazon Business. They don't understand that it is different than purchasing for yourself. There is a suite of services that are available, like we can have workflows set up. We can we can track like when water bottles are purchased, we can track anything that's purchase. We can promote different items. We can we can block. We haven't done it yet at the county. And I don't think we have to because we have already all the other guided buying offers in place.

[00:16:27 - 00:16:36]
Kelly:
So Shawn, could you give me an example of how guided buying works? Maybe how you flag something as a preferred product or preferred supplier, and maybe what the buyer would see on the other side?

[00:16:36 - 00:17:58]
Shawn:
We have staff that work 24 seven and I'm not available. So having this ability to have products marked in catalog that this is a preferred item. So we have many preference is that the county we are looking for a lot of values. And so if a product has multiple preferences such as if they have an eco label and they are a certified firm, they're going to go to the top and it's marked right away. So not only does it go to a top of a search, so if they go to search for, sleeping bags, which is something we've purchased from Amazon before, in our emergency response efforts, ones that are made locally are going to come up first. And also it'll be marked right away. So not only is it when you open up like and look at all the specific versions of a product, they're just at the top.

They can go search and go further down the search list if they want. But we're telling them, please buy from the top. And then we're able to get monthly reports and, and we can see who's purchase what and go talk to them and ask them, hey, why did you purchase from this other company when we we already had a preference for this one right? It really does take the guesswork of buyers trying to decide, like, what am I allowed to buy?

[00:17:58 - 00:18:10]
Kelly:
Shawn, when you're buying for the county, how do you keep your purchasing decisions aligned with what the community needs most and maybe kind of keeping track of supplies that you ordered before that? You want to reorder again?

[00:18:10 - 00:20:55]
Shawn:
So we really rely upon technology and solutions that Amazon offers like with the lists. I can create a list or an employee can create a list. These lists can be set up in a couple of different ways. Like one way is we can pick a specific product from a specific company, because often times there's so much out there and catalog folders is one of them. And there's a specific folder that our court system uses. So we were able to onboard a local seller selling these products and put them in a list.

So that not only can one department order those folders, but multiple departments that collaborate together with the court system. So that was one example of a really great way to use the list is not only are we getting the right product like and that in and of itself is difficult. Sometimes it's the folder where the right size is.

It does have the numbers and the right size is it, does it have all the right things on there for visually impaired, staff or clients working with this, these folders.

But also that we want to buy it from the distributor that's here because we can't always buy products made in the United States, but can we buy it from a distributor that's here?


That's a next step. And so that's what we've been able to do with the lists. And we're really hoping to use those lists more in the future, like working with, all employees out there and being able to see what they're ordering, what they're putting in their lists, and then we're able to have that discussion of, is there a better item, or should we be sourcing from a local source and onboard more local vendors so that we can easily purchase from them?

And we have onboarded a few, and we're talking to a few now that that could be an option for them, is to sign on to Amazon Business and then we can find them there. And that would be easy for us then to purchase not only for one department, but for all departments, because we can share that list out.

And then the next step is, is that any organization has Amazon business. If we have a list, we can share it with them. So if it's another government jurisdiction or a community based organization that we're contracting with, if we create a list for personal care products or that are just more environmentally preferable, we can say, hey, this is these are the products we found on Amazon Business.

Here's our list. Now they could buy it from Amazon or they could go find it elsewhere. We'll leave that to them. But it's a way for us to gather the product list that we're really looking at, this is what we're looking for right now and it's going to change tomorrow.

[00:20:55 - 00:21:17]
Kelly:
Well, I love that technology has really solved some of that for you and made it easy to sort of almost buy it, scale and be able to kind of take your list and give it to others and, kind of take some of that guesswork out and the early kind of decision or, you know, good selection process.

Shawn, where does sustainability fit into your approach when, deciding on purchasing decisions for your county?

[00:21:17 - 00:22:39]
Shawn:
We look at sustainability as the approach, bringing our values in is the first step. So if you have a need really looking at how we define sustainability and we align with the sustainable purchasing leadership Council and that there are the three impact areas and that we use those three impact areas of, people, planet and prosperity.

So we really want to ensure that what we're purchasing is, you know, a caretaker of the planet and the people and that it's going to help everyone in the world be prosperous in the future and have a good environment to live in.

And we really want an overall health of success of all of our community. We don't want to buy a product that is making another community suffer or have negative impacts.

And we align with the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council and we use their guidance often. In fact, we started our Amazon Business approach, in redefining what we do with Amazon Business by taking the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council guidance. How do you purchase with your values in Amazon Business? And they've laid it out in their easy to use guidance right now it's only from members. But, if you join the SPLC, you can have that guidance.

[00:22:39 - 00:23:03]
Kelly:
That's great. That's really important. And, such a great message for our communities out there that are kind of struggling with, how do I get this set up? And, what value should I should I be abiding by?

Shawn, when you're managing high volume purchases or large projects or maybe sort of last minute requests, you're working with Amazon business, how does Amazon business play a role in helping with some of your big initiatives, especially when it comes to emergency response?

[00:23:03 - 00:25:31]
Shawn:
We have some emergency cases, especially when we have grant funds that are running out. And oftentimes we have departments and this is down at like a division level. People who are not working in procurement, they will get a large chunk of money and they will say, you have 30 days to spend this a little history, procurement and government, it normally takes us, you know, at least a month to get something in the pipeline for doing a request for a quote, or doing an RFP or doing an RFP.

It takes a lot of staff time. So when we have departments that are all of a sudden the feds say, you have 30, 60 days to spend this, procurement staff. Like, I don't have time for that right now. Like, what are you talking about? You have to spend X amount of dollars and it has to be on these specifications for generators. And we just had that case happen a few months ago. And we've had it happen over and over again where grant funds came in. And they needed to buy generators and our procurement staff had no time to help out. These social workers that were trying to figure out what to do with grant funds. So they used the request for quote system to and with all of their specifications.

And then I was able to give them all of our value based specifications. And they took that to the Amazon request for a quote team and got quotes back, and then were able to purchase their generators through that system. Procurement staff did not have to do anything but the compliance piece on it on the back end, like, oh, we received everything.

Here's the invoice and make sure the invoice was paid and paid appropriately. And then we were able to recover everything because from the grant fund perspective from the federal government, we got all the documentation we needed from. And it was on business people to say, this is how we spent the funds. This is how we procured it. And so everyone was happy. And that's fantastic. And now those generators are there for when emergency strikes. And I think we're going to be seeing that more and more as staff are reduced. County jurisdictions all over the country and a lot of jurisdictions are they're having staff reductions. And as that's happening, we're needing to look at these automated tools more.

And this is a great one to use to get an idea of what is out there, you know.

[00:25:31 - 00:25:46]
Kelly:
As we kind of wrap up our conversation, I'm hoping you can share a piece of advice or maybe a takeaway that you'd share with other counties or government agencies and even industries may be looking to strengthen how they approach sourcing and buying and that values driven approach you've talked about.

[00:25:46 - 00:27:07]
Shawn:
You know, my advice is to stay open to your community and all of the offerings available, because there are solutions out there. And don't be afraid to use Amazon business, and don't be afraid to, be open to it and know what your values are when you're going in. Because if you use an e-procurement system or if you use a solution like Amazon, everything is trackable. You have good reporting, you have lessons learned. And those are two really big concepts in procurement. To be a good steward, you have to be able to track things and report things and then go improve on it. Look into it, look at the contracts that are available out there for Amazon business. And then you can see that, oh, I'm going to be able to do my job.
If I onboard this. This is going to be another good way to figure out what do we need. It's a great catalog to bring on to your suite of catalogs, because it's going to provide what you need in the way that you need it, and just in time, and then it's going to be able to be reportable.

And there's always a way to improve it, because I have found that I work with our account rep, Noah Evans, all of the time, and he's just right there able to help us and troubleshoot everything. And if it's not Noah, it's the one 800 line, and there's always someone that answers.

[00:27:07 - 00:27:32]
Kelly:
That's great. I mean, Amazon Business really is full of lots of different technologies and tools to really customize to your own sort of buying.

Thank you Shawn for joining me and for sharing your insights. And thank you all for tuning in to the Smart Business Buying podcast.

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