Third Party Store Contracting

This post was contributed by Holly Gabriel, Southern Oregon University; Amy Hofer, Open Oregon Educational Resources; Kevin Moore, Mt. Hood Community College; Justine Munds, Clackamas Community College; and Julia Stone, Portland State University. Thank you to reader Michael Bowman, Portland State University.

The purpose of this post is to walk chronologically through the process of contracting with a third party campus store. Often, open education advocates are thrown into this process and learn as they go. We hope that sharing a roundup of considerations that advocates should keep in mind, and existing resources they can reuse or adapt, will lead to more student-centered outcomes.

In the process of gathering these materials, we have discussed a long-shot idea. What if open education advocates submitted their own response to a request for proposals (RFP)? This would be an internal proposal for a course materials procurement model that would be considered alongside third-party proposals. We don’t have an example of this strategy to share but are excited about the possibility.

Past posts on related topics:

• A Barnes & Noble Experience
• Affordable Textbooks and Independent College Stores
• Thinking Critically About Inclusive and Equitable Access Programs
• Archived webinars on campus store topics

Contracting process steps

Step One: Connect stakeholders

At this stage of the process, advocates can self-educate, reach out to stakeholders, and communicate the purpose of your unit’s involvement. Establish shared understandings of the outsourcing goals, stakeholders in campus store, and criteria for evaluation. This step should be as early in the process as possible, though the timeline depends on when you learn about the change.

Stakeholders may include faculty, staff, students, librarians, accessibility services, the registrar’s office, business services, athletic director, campus legal representative, campus facilities director, etc.

Relevant resources:

• Glossary of terms
  • Bookstore Vocabulary
• Stakeholder education
  • Facts about Inclusive Access
  • Let Us Get You Into College: Community College Librarians, Barnes & Noble, and OER
  • Bookstores In The World Of Open
  • Opening the Bookstore: Elevating OER Conversations Amidst College Bookstore Outsourcing
  • Textbook Affordability Models
  • The Role of Business Agreements in Defining Textbook Affordability and Digital Materials: A Document Analysis
  • History of College Textbook Prices: Examining Past Practices and Emerging Models
  • Fixing the Broken Textbook Market, Third Edition
  • Automatic Textbook Billing Fact Sheets for Instructors and Administrators

Step Two: Strategically engage leadership

The purpose of this step is to communicate stakeholders’ investment and rationale for wanting to be at the table during this process. We discovered a resource gap for this step. Please use the comments field, below, if you are able to share templates for working with leadership.

Step Three: Your ideal bookstore

The goal of this step is to describe the campus store model that best balances different stakeholder needs at your institution. Is it online-only? Is it hybrid online and in-person? Is it full-service in person? Are the answers to these questions different for swag and snacks vs course materials? Where do you stand on inclusive access? Establish opportunities for all stakeholders to communicate their desired services, terms, and criteria.

Cast as wide a net as possible to answer these questions. If you have time, send out surveys (faculty/staff-facing and student-facing) to hear from your community. Make sure that your surveys don’t ask leading questions or use jargon that respondents may not understand.

Relevant resources:

• Empathy building exercises
  • Empathy Building Exercise Directions – Student Centered Course Material Procurement Models
  • Empathy Building Exercise – Student Centered Course Material Procurement Models

Step Four: Develop a request for proposals (RFP)

Utilize the answers to questions in step three to specify your institution’s needs via your RFP.

Relevant resources:

• Understand what you want in a successful proposal
  • SPARC Textbook Billing Contract Library

Step Five: Read proposals 

The proposals submitted by vendors in response to RFPs are huuuuuge so this is a big undertaking. This step is distinct from negotiating. The educational tools from step one will come in handy during this step, because the packets are full of bookstore-specific lingo.

Consider how you will assign this very large amount of work. In one case, Clackamas Community College used a subgroup of essential roles including the textbook affordability librarian, bookstore manager, and business office contracts expert to read and evaluate the RFP responses.

Relevant resources:

• Evaluate and compare proposals
  • CCC RFP Evaluation Tool
    • Some information (e.g. in the “Remember!” boxes) is specific to Clackamas Community College. You should substitute information unique to your institution (likely learned during step 3) in these spaces for your own use.

Step Six: Select finalists and host vendor presentations

You can use the evaluations from Step Five to select the finalists that you invite to give presentations. Work with your institution’s business office to learn the dos and don’ts of vendor interviews/presentations. For example, you may be required to ask all vendors the same questions.

Clackamas Community College used the same tool to evaluate RFPs and vendor presentations. While a subgroup read and evaluated the proposals, all committee members evaluated the presentations. Numeric scores helped the college select the winning vendor.

Relevant resources:

• Clackamas Community College list of standard questions to ask vendors at their presentations:
  • What elements do you consider in determining a successful campus partnership?
  • How do you ensure that your course material prices are competitive and fair?
  • What are some unique products or services that you offer that set you apart from other vendors in collegiate retail?
  • How do you envision the existing bookstore manager/staff’s role in the new store?
  • What is your evaluation plan for your services to the COLLEGE?
  • What are your processes for communication and data sharing?

Step Seven: Select winning vendor and negotiate for your contract inclusions

Every vendor will have a standard contract agreement. During negotiations, open education advocates can recommend student-centered revisions. Gain buy-in for these recommendations by communicating with stakeholders about the implications, opportunities, and challenges of proposed contract language on their work unit’s processes, impact, and abilities.

Examples of contract revisions to include:

• Ensure accurate use of terminology such as inclusive access and OER
• Ability to fulfill any statewide and/or accreditation reporting
• Permit library course reserves
• Earmark the college’s commission for textbook affordability efforts or scholarship fund
• Include enforcement mechanisms or penalties if contracts aren’t followed

Your leverage during contract negotiations will depend on the vendor’s profit expectations from the deal. Smaller institutions may be less likely to win concessions. Statewide policy can give institutions more negotiating power, for example if the policy specifies that automatic textbook billing must be implemented on an opt-in basis.

Relevant resources:

• Third-Party Bookstore Contracts: A Guide for Negotiating Contracts That Support the Use of Open Educational Resources
• CCC Desired Contract Inclusions (adapted from the guide linked above)
• Bookstore contract suggestions to strengthen OER (adaptable public version)
• Recent Update: Third Party Bookstore Contracts

Step Eight: Manage transition

The purpose of this step is to avoid losing data and institutional knowledge from the previous store manager during the transition. This can be very different from one institution to another, depending on which bookstore software and student information software you use. A transitional advisory group can help with this step.

It’s unfortunately very common to lose data about past adoptions and pricing. Request all data that the old store is contractually required to provide before they go.

Communicate with faculty about changes in adoption workflows. For example, have there been changes in which materials are required to route through the store that weren’t in the past? Have default adoptions changed?

Here is an example of what this step might look like: name individuals at your institution who are responsible for various pieces of the transition, including answering questions. The vendor will give you general transition info/timelines, but you will need to be sure that folks at your institution are keeping tabs on how things are going and that folks working on the transition know who to contact with issues, questions, etc.

We discovered a resource gap for this step. Please use the comments field, below, if you are able to share workflows for a successful transition.

Live with your contract

Congratulations, you’ve made it through the process of contracting with a third party campus store! Now what?

We recommend that you keep your evaluation or transition committee intact as a Bookstore Oversight committee. This group can address issues as they arise, and can manage evaluation of the vendor’s services. After all that work on contract negotiations, the institution will need to do ongoing work to hold the vendor to the terms you negotiated.

Your evaluation plan can collect stories and data from faculty and community. It can also track violations of the letter or the spirit of the contract.

You may discover that you need to begin the cycle again and prepare for the next RFP. There are many factors that might lead to this decision, but two clear causes would be either bottom line issues that would cause the institution to end the contract; or the vendor breaking the contract.

Readers, do you have lessons learned from an RFP process? Please use the comments field, below, to share stories (signed or anonymous) about what went well or what you wish went better. Note that this post is shared publicly with a CC-BY license.