UC Chief Procurement Officer Announced; UC Procurement Services December Newsletter

Throughout January and February, members of the P200 team will visit the campuses to conduct in-person Spend Analytics and Supplier Sourcing and Registration training as well as prepare for SRS phase 1b.

Contact your SPOC for more details.

Meet the Team

Zoanne Nelson

Zoanne Nelson joined the team last April as the P200 Program Director. Zoanne was formerly the UCSF Associate Director of the Program Management Office (PMO), where she led the implementation of six PeopleSoft finance modules, the Effort Reporting System, the HBS Timekeeping System, and other finance, procurement, and HR initiatives. Prior to joining UCSF, Zoanne was a Senior Manager with Price Waterhouse in Washington DC, where she led various projects for USAID and lived in Russia for three years. She has three kids and is hoping to send the oldest one to UC next year!

Myth Buster

What do you mean by a sealed RFx?

A sealed RFx is an event where all bids submitted are sealed and are not visible to the RFx Buyer until the "Sealed Bid Opening Date" passes. It does not denote that a public sealed bid opening is required.

It is our standard practice to open bids privately once the event has closed unless, in the judgment of the Materiel Manager, a public opening will be advantageous to the University.

SRS Quick Reference Guides and Links to Webinars

A reminder that you can find SRS training materials and quick reference guides here.

University of California welcomes new Chief Procurement Officer, Bill Cooper

After an extensive national search, I am pleased to announce that William (Bill) Cooper has accepted the position of Chief Procurement Officer for the University of California.

Bill has over 40 years of experience in Procurement. He comes to us from Stanford University where he served as the Associate Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer. Prior to that, Bill also worked at the University of Missouri as Associate Vice President for Management Services and Chief Procurement Officer and at CalTech as Director of Procurement Services

Bill is known in the procurement community for his expertise in procurement transformations, focused on delivering exceptional client service by transforming people, process and technology. Colleagues have described Bill as someone who "is open to change; being creative; not stuck in a box." He is admired for his approachability, creativity, persuasiveness, strategic vision and results orientation. He is highly resourceful, a team player and a strong believer in relationship building. We are excited to have someone with his level of expertise join us at such a crucial period in our history. UC's procurement organization is redefining the value we provide to campus, students and faculty and staff through the sourcing, implementation, and utilization of competitive contracts and innovative supply chain strategies for procured goods and services. In collaboration with UC campus leadership, Bill will oversee the finalization of the P200 strategic vision and drive its execution.

Bill will step into the role of CPO in 2013.

Please join me in welcoming Bill Cooper to the University and to our team.

Peter Taylor

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Office of the President

Sponsor's Corner

This past month marked an important milestone in the P200 plan with the introduction of our UC Supplier Registration and Sourcing system (SRS). UCOP and all the campuses can now create and run RFx events in SRS. As of today, eight RFx events have been initiated with one reverse auction in progress, 211 procurement staff can access SRS, and 150 system-wide suppliers are registered.

The Supplier Registration and Sourcing go-live demonstrates the power of UC-wide collaboration to enable large-scale innovative changes across the procurement program, and sets the stage for subsequent P200 initiatives. I want to take this opportunity to thank the many advocates, testers, designers and implementers from the campuses. Your ongoing support and collaboration guided the Core Team to a solution that meets our collective needs.

Our innovative work continues to gain the attention of Governor Brown and the Regents.

[Read More]

Peter Taylor

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Office of the President

UCSF and UC Berkeley Host Successful First Reverse Auction in SRS

In the first reverse auction run on UC's new SRS platform, UCSF and Berkeley saved 44% by competitively bidding a portfolio of chemicals, equating to approximately $200,000 in savings.

Over the course of the 90 minute event, the team collected approximately 50 bids from four different suppliers. "By rationalizing our supplier base we were able to leverage our spend and generate these savings for campus", said Jim Hine, UCSF and UC Berkeley Assistant Vice Chancellor and Chief Procurement Officer. "With BearBuy we will be able to channel this spend to the winning bidder and block competitive products, a strategy that has been very successful for us."

The new pricing is expected to be implemented at UCSF and Berkeley sometime between January and March. Under the terms of the RFP, the pricing will be available to other UC campuses that are able to similarly consolidate spend and direct orders to the awarded supplier.

Congratulations to the project team of Ramsey Hanna, Ross Bausone and Susan Riddle!

Justin Sullivan

Strategic Sourcing Manager | UCSF and UC Berkeley

Supplier Registration and Sourcing

With a reverse auction in progress and an open RFP, SRS has found its home at UC. So what does it mean that SRS is live? This means that system-wide, multi-campus, and campus-specific sourcing events are being posted and executed via SRS. Multi-campus and campus-specific events are utilizing the system-wide templates and workflow, routing to an RFx Manager for that campus for necessary approvals.

Additional Training and Outreach

The SRS team will continue to contact buyers with RFx events initiated in the system to provide one-on-one support. For in-depth guidance on specific Sourcing Director functionality, we are developing short recorded webinars with accompanying quick reference guides. Between now and December 21st, these webinars will be posted to the Procurement Services site.

[Read More]

Brian Agius

Manager - Contracts, Compliance & Systems | UC Procurement Services

Bibi Ansari

Procurement Systems Manager | UC Procurement Services

Spend Analytics

Go-Live January 7, 2013

As our go-live date of January 7th draws closer, we are excited with the progress the working group is making. We now have two years of audited, normalized data available in the system, giving you a broader reference range for meaningful data analysis.

Our final round of testing kicked off this week with participation from all the campuses. Our focus is to validate the two year spend data and ensure that additional Spend Radar data elements and functionality (Pcard, Commodity Classification, Vendor Normalization, and Transaction Type Container) perform as expected.

We've also developed our training plan which you'll hear more about shortly and will coincide with Campus visits throughout January and February, 2013.

[Read More]

Erin Riley

Analytics & Reporting Manager | UC Procurement Services

Who is Your SPOC?

Photograph of UCSD SRS & P200 Debriefing

An essential role in the development of our integrated Procurement systems is the SPOC, your Single Point of Contact. Last month we introduced them to you, but what do they do? In summary, this person is your local change readiness contact. They:

Provide feedback and direction for your campus
Ensure your campus' needs are met
Help identify campus representatives for working groups
Coordinate training with UCOP
Ensure you have the information you need to be successful

[Read More]

Have a Question?

Where to go for help

with SRS

A reminder that your CPR is your first line of support and contact person for enhancement requests or other suggestions.

Training materials including webinars and quick reference guides are available on the Procurement Services site.

Wondering about something else?

Contact your SPOC.

Editorial Note

Our next edition of the P200 newsletter will be distributed after the December break and will align with Spend Analytics go-live.

Happy Holidays!