U.S. Co-ops is proud to host two webinars during the first week of December with its associate members Project Equity and Medullus Systems on issues critical to the purchasing cooperative industry: succession planning and technology solutions.
Succession planning is an urgent need among an increasing number of businesses—especially as baby boomers near retirement age. Because purchasing co-ops are an important part of helping independent business members stay independent, competitive and rooted in their communities, U.S. Co-ops has partnered with Project Equity to better understand the succession challenges of purchasing co-op member companies, and to assess how employee ownership transitions can help keep these companies independent long-term.
Join U.S. Co-ops, Project Equity and other purchasing co-op experts (Stephen K. Irvin from Amicus Solar and Jack Bailey from IDC-USA) during a webinar on Tuesday, December 6, from 1 – 2 p.m. to learn more about how purchasing co-ops and other independent business networks can utilize employee ownership and worker co-op conversions to help locally-owned businesses stay locally-owned.
During “Succession Planning for Purchasing Co-ops and Their Members,” you’ll learn:
• How to “convert” a business to a worker cooperative
• Approaches to financing employee buy-outs
• Education programs you can implement across your business network
• General timeline to consider for conversion
• Cost of conversion
With technology one of the key drivers of business in today’s marketplace, U.S. Co-ops encourages purchasing co-ops to find ways to leverage strategic software to improve its member and vendor management, increase operational efficiencies and recruit more effectively.
In support of this belief, U.S. Co-ops collaborated with Associate Member Medullus Systems on a survey to help define some basic technology benchmarks for the purchasing co-op sector. Join us for a webinar on Wednesday, December 7, from 1 – 2 p.m., as Medullus Systems Partner Roni Banerjee unpacks the results of that survey.
During “Benchmarking Technology Solutions for Purchasing Cooperatives,” you’ll learn:
• How purchasing co-ops and their members view technology
• The spending habits of purchasing co-ops for IT
• Benchmarks on types of software, effectiveness, satisfaction levels and security
• Marketing activities, IT integrations and more!
Click here to view these and other upcoming events.