Getting the best deals for your schools

By Karen Burns

Hello everyone!  I’m the Business Development Officer for the Independent Schools Portal. We hope that you’re enjoying getting to know the portal and finding out how it can help you grow together as a group of schools.

It’s my job to link your schools with our Commercial Partners and bring benefits to all of you. We’re constantly looking for ways in which we can help you save money as schools and help our Commercial Partners showcase their products to you. We hope you like what we are starting to show you. As with anything on the Portal, we welcome your feedback and ideas and if there’s anything you want to see, any companies you’d like us to approach, let us know and we’ll do our best to make it happen.

When making new purchases, be it replacing something you already have, or investing in something completely new, we know you need to look for the best possible prices for your school.

With this in mind there are several ways in which the portal can help you.

1. We have included a quote system. If you are looking for products and services provided by our Commercial Partners, you can submit an anonymous request for a quote from these businesses and they can respond to you offering their best price. If you wish to review these quotes with the relevant business you can contact them directly thereafter.
2. As a group you have significantly more buying power than one institution alone. As such you can co-ordinate buying needs using the tools available in the portal. Use the notice boards and forums to see if any other schools in your District are looking to buy the same things as you and partner up. If a product or service isn’t yet available on the portal, we can try and source several quotes for you and see if any other schools are interested in the same thing to help you get a better deal.
3. As a Commercial Partner, companies can offer you direct discounts through their pages on the portal.

We are working hard to bring you new and interesting Commercial Partners and hope you will take a look around the offerings of the ones that we already have listed.  There are already some exciting products and services for you to take a look at, keep checking back as we add more. In January we attended the BETT show in London and were amazed by the fantastic wealth of products and services that are entering the educational arena and we will be bringing as many of these to you as possible.

I’m always on hand to answer any questions you may have, discuss ideas that you have for the portal and to arrange any training that you may require from David Winfield.  If there’s any purchasing help or co-ordination that you would like support with, whether you are teaching, office, financial or any other department, then please do get in touch.

We look forward to engaging more partners to enable you to get the best deals possible for your schools and I’m really looking forward to working with you!