Corporate United - Fourth Quarter 2007

Sourcing Intiative Category Timeline
The Corporate United sourcing team has made significant progress on the sourcing initiative since our last update in Q3, and will continue to move quickly on each new category. To get involved with current or planned initiatives, contact your Corporate United representative right away.

Vendor-Neutral Managed Staffing
The vendor-neutral managed staffing project is well on schedule to be the first completed contract on the list of sourcing initiative categories. The Corporate United sourcing team continues to meet with suppliers and industry experts in this space to determine the best solution and fit with Corporate United and its membership. Corporate United has assembled a committed group of members that will serve as the sourcing committee and guide the project from beginning to end. That team will meet in early December to establish a group plan and mutually agree on the team’s goal and objectives of the project. Sourcing committee members will examine the completed RFIs, compile their company’s data requirements, and ultimately determine who will be involved in the RFP that is to be released in late December. Corporate United and the sourcing committee fully expect to have a vendor-neutral managed staffing supplier identified by the middle of the first quarter of 2008 and a contract finalized and presented to the general membership by the beginning of Q2.

Electrical Supplies
As suspected, we had a great deal of interest from the membership in sourcing electrical supplies. The already strong committee completed a kickoff call in mid-November. The group is busy aggregating their spend details and developing specifications for the RFP that they expect to complete and push out early in Q1. Look for a roll-out of the electrical supplies contract in the second quarter of 2008.

Janitorial Services
The next category to launch will be janitorial services in January 2008. The sourcing team has already identified and received commitments from a few anchor members to help guide the project, but we are still looking to solidify the core group. As with the other categories, we will need to set specifications to drive competition among the suppliers. If your company has spend to commit or an interest in joining the member sourcing committee, please contact Gary Como on the Corporate United sourcing team.

Next in Line
As the sourcing team speaks to more and more members about the upcoming categories, prioritizing the categories becomes an easier task. We have reorganized the initial list presented to the membership to determine a new list of next-in-line categories. In order to rank the possible next categories, we need to hear from the members about interest, spend and experience.

Do you have a wireless contract coming due toward the end of 2008 that you would love to replace with a Corporate United agreement? Are you month-to-month on a category that is becoming continually more important and costly? Does your company’s spend and specifications for pallets beg for a leveraged contract? Please contact Gary Como (gcomo@corporateunited.com) or Nicole Finefrock (nfinefrock@corporateunited.com) to discuss your ranking preference for the categories below.