Purchase Aggregation

The ENTRANCE purchase aggregation acts as an impartial orchestrator of purchase aggregations to ensure a fair negotiation of the risk-, cost-, and gain-sharing mechanisms between the collaboration stakeholders. The trustee meets the following criteria:
  • Neutrality: The trustee shall not be involved in the collaboration as a party and shall have no stakes in any of the participants’ organisations. The trustee is fully non-asset-based.
  • Independence: The trustee shall be a service provider for facilitating cooperation in a legally compliant manner and shall therefore be distinguished from the role of the purchase participants (both at the supply side and the demand side).
  • Confidentiality: The providers (suppliers) and buyers (users) will provide their competition law-sensitive information confidentially to the trustee only. In this way, one will not need to share sensitive information with other organisations.

The purchase aggregation plays a role in/as:

  • Architect in developing fair collaborations.
  • Guaranteeing impartiality.
  • Guaranteeing balance in the collaboration – avoiding dominance among the collaborating actors.
  • Guaranteeing anti-trust compliance.
  • The conception of the multilateral agreement or contract.
  • Advising in defining fair rules for cost and risk sharing.
  • Mediator or referee, single point of contact in case of conflicts.
  • Trusted party.
  • Facilitating entry and exit processes, in an impartial, independent, and confident way.
  • Facilitating/supporting extensions of the collaborating community.
  • Providing an appropriate ‘governance’ for the collaboration.

The following process steps towards an effective collaboration are envisaged:

  1. Bringing together the interested parties (initiated matches on the platform);
  2. Scoping: defining the scope of the collaboration;
  3. Aligning: coming to an alignment on the collaboration case;
  4. Analysing: elaborating the business case;
  5. Synthesis: finetuning the business case including risk & gain sharing rules;
  6. Implementation preparation: planning the Go-Life; and
  7. Agreement: developing the multi-lateral contract.

The neutral trustee will also create and provide a compilation of legal document templates that can help transport and mobility solution providers and buyers to overcome the technicalities connected to building partnerships and achieving a market uptake. The following documents will be generated:

  • Templates for cooperation: Memorandum of understanding, Non-Disclosure Agreements, etc.
  • Contract templates: Individual purchase contracts, collaborative services contracts, etc.

Click here to read the manual as a guide through the process to set up a joint purchase or purchase aggregation and it explains the support services that ENTRANCE offers.

The following diagram shows the joint purchasing process in 7 steps.

Joint purchasing – process description: