Research Brief: Bundled Services: A Framework for Cutting Costs, Improving Performance, and Supporting Small Businesses

摘要

Bundling is a fast-growing trend in the commercial sector. The term is applied when services previously purchased separately are consolidated and purchased together from the same provider-e.g. janitorial and building maintenance. Many commercial organizations have found that bundling cuts their total costs and improves service. These goals are important to federal organizations too. But federal organizations have an additional mandate: By law, they are required to support small businesses. Bundling results in fewer, larger contracts that may be beyond the capabilities of small businesses. To ensure that its procurement procedures meet these diverse goals, the Air Force asked RAND to develop a methodology to (1) decide when and how to bundle the services the Air Force buys and (2) justify these decisions in a way that satisfies the requirements of the 2000 legislation supporting small businesses. RAND's suggested methodology is based on review of the applicable literature and extensive interviews with commercial and Air Force buyers, providers of bundled services, and small business advocacy groups. The key to the suggested methodology is a well-constructed Request for Information (RFI) that elicits credible information about potential savings and performance benefits associated with bundling and about small business participation opportunities from the providers themselves. Moreover, the information must be provided in a format that will be useful to the Air Force and justifiable to the Small Business Administration (SBA).