Northamptonshire Area Procurement Service (NAPS) is a shared procurement team established in November 2008 between six borough and district councils and hosted by Northampton Borough Council.

The East Midlands Property Alliance (empa) has been formed by Local Authorities in the East Midlands to improve the delivery of property services to their communities. empa is tasked with providing best practice and efficiency savings to the local authorities for construction and related services. As at October 2009 twenty-eight East Midlands local authorities are members of empa.

Welland Procurement Unit has been established as a shared service, serving initially five small councils, with active support and funding from, amongst others, the East Midlands Centre of Excellence (the forerunner of the Improvement and Efficiency Partnership).

Category management is simply a way of the council managing its buying activity by grouping together related products and services such as ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), vehicles or stationery, across the council and mapping them onto a supplier market.