The county purchasing agent’s major function is to do the shopping for the county. The recommended best practice for the purchasing agent is to learn as much as possible about their potential vendors, including the following characteristics:

• What types of products or services they sell
• The quality of their products, based on experience, research, and reputation
• The quality of their service (is it fast, dependable, and customer-focused?)
• Their market position on pricing (are they competitive and fair?)

This chapter offers some hints on developing a good vendor resource file by suggesting ways to locate vendors, obtain product information such as price and quality, and maintain the file as a future reference source.