Research on procurement challenges within the ed market universe are few and far between, so I was delighted to see an interesting bit of research presented at this year’s ISTE ed tech conference. (The annual ISTE conference, the largest ed-tech conference in the U.S., was held this summer in Philadelphia, with over 20,000 in attendance and more than 500+ companies exhibiting their wares.)
The study in question, entitled “From the market to the classroom: How ed-tech products are procured by school districts interacting with vendors“ (Morrison, J. R., Ross, S. M., Cheung, A. C. K. (2019), Educational Technology Research and Development, 67(2) pp.389-421 doi:10.1007/s11423-019-09649-4) did not disappoint.
Overview
The authors of this study (Jennifer Morrison and Steven Ross from Johns Hopkins University along with Alan Cheung from the Chinese University of Hong Kong) strove to better understand how school districts “discover, evaluate, and acquire ed-tech products and how vendors market and work through this process with districts”. The study looked at the procurement process through the lens of five typical “action points”:
- The amount of funding available to purchase ed- tech products
- Assessment of needs
- The discovery process for ed-tech products
- Efforts in the evaluation of product quality and effectiveness
- The acquisition of selected products
The study’s focus was on student-facing ed-tech products that are used for either core or supplementary instruction.
Methodology
More than 335 participants, ranging from district stakeholders in 54 school districts to vendors from 47 ed-tech companies, were either interviewed or surveyed in this mixed methods research study. The 288 district respondents included superintendents, curriculum directors, business officers, technology directors, and principals from 31 states. The districts involved had an average student enrollment of 21,000 students. The 47 ed-tech vendor participants represented ed- tech firms offering personalized learning programs. According to the study authors, “The majority (43%) of ed-tech companies had been in business for two to five years, followed by 11 to 15 years (19%), and then more than 20 years (17%)”.
Findings
This study’s findings were legion, too many to list here. Below is an initial sampling; if you enjoy wonky reading, the entire fifty-one page study can be found here.
Educational Customer Insights
- District product requirements tended to be vague; districts rarely conducted needs assessments (such as aiming at specific student performance data), if at all.
- Purchasing decisions are most often made based on small-scale pilot tryouts, because education is so risk adverse with their investments.
- Districts lack a central source of information for both product information and evidence of effectiveness.
- Site references are seen by customers as a critical source of information; respondents noted that they either would “ask the vendor for current users or would consult with neighboring districts regarding their opinions and experiences with products”.
- District respondents often seek evidence demonstrating results from vendors, such as a vendor’s white paper or external research publications. Still, many educators do not trust research produced by the vendor or the industry.
- The most frequent challenge for educators expressed in survey responses and in interviews was insufficient funding. As one respondent wrote: “cost of the items is a number one concern”, while budget reductions are always waiting in the wings.
Vendor Insights
- Vendors indicated that their outreach to school districts began with cold calls or emails, with customer referrals, direct teacher contact and ed-tech conferences barely registering as effective means of selling products.
- In survey responses, vendors reported the greatest challenge of the purchasing process involved these instances: RFPs, buying cycles, and a poor understanding of district procurement procedures. Many vendors also expressed concerns that “RFPs are specifically created to be exclusionary”, and that “the time, effort, and human capital required to develop a proposal” could often be formidable.
Some of these findings may not surprise you, while others will definitely help you rethink your current strategies for reaching the educational market. In my next article in this three-part series, we will unearth some very visible dissonance that echoes between the educator and the vendor in the seductive dance we call procurement. – Len Scrogan
