UMass Dartmouth News

Streamlining the Procurement Process

FINANCIAL SERVICES

eProcurement & the UMass Market Place

The University System, the five campuses and Presidents Office, are in the final stages of awarding a strategic partnership for an eProcurement solution.  The eProcurement system will streamline the procurement process for community members, leverage spending across all campuses to obtain lower on average costs for specific commodity categories, increase the ability to perform spend analytics to identify additional areas of opportunity to reduce costs and allow the University to better manage the expenditure of University funds. eProcurement will facilitate the migration of transactions from the University’s procard to the UMass Market Place. 

Think of the UMass Marketplace (eProcurement) as being similar to Amazon.com where you can shop for a variety of diverse products under one website and execute one order seamlessly. The difference being that a Bank Card (Credit Card) will not be required.  An electronic PO will be issued to the vendor. The order will then be filled and an electronic invoice and payment will occur.  It will be a fully integrated electronic procure to pay system (P2P).   The UMass Market Place will allow end users access to a user-friendly and streamlined purchasing system that will enhance the management and control of small-dollar transactions traditionally associated with procards and Purchase Orders.   It is anticipated that a strategic partners solution will be selected by the end of February with the initial implementation being completed by November 2012. 

The initial implementation phase of the eProcurement solution is e-requisitioning. The solution will be pushed out to the edge of the community and engage end users. Additionally, this phase will bring on board the existing suppliers from the old UMass Marketplace to the new.  The ability to push requisitioning out one step further to the requisitioner/end user and simultaneously integrate the UMass Marketplace will eliminate departmental paper requisitions, enhance customer satisfaction, streamline the P2P process, enhance strategic sourcing contract usage, spending management, spending analytics and reduce the number of procard transactions annually.