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Living our values
Making Procurement easy
UCSB posted an RFP for carpet and vinyl flooring in SRS in March, and awarded it in April. I found that the best attributes of SRS are the notifications and public visibility. I received automated emails from SRS telling me when my suppliers submitted a bid, taking the nerve-wracking 11th hour physical bid drop-offs out of the process. I found that many suppliers outside of our local supplier list had reviewed my RFP, resulting in a wider net that we wouldn't have achieved by posting on our local website. The bid resulted in anticipated savings of $58,000 per year.
While adopting a new system will always bring challenges, I am confident SRS will reduce Buyer time and bid protests.
Calli Price
UCSB Buyer Supervisor
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Commodity Team Manager (20130168)
Director of Strategic Sourcing (20130171) |
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Procurement Calendar
April
April - May Contract Director testing
May
Strategic Sourcing engagement commences
9th: Procurement Management Board Meets
15th: Spend Analytics 30/30 Training: Custom Reports
15th: Procurement Leadership Council On-site Meeting
28th: RFXtra Training: Items
June
7th: Next P200 newsletter |
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Myth Buster
UNSPSC is the "be all and end all" of data classification
Not quite! As an alternative to UNSPSC, or if you need more granular detail, search at the Invoice or PO line item level and work your way up back to the classification. There may be cases where you're searching for specific detail which may only be found in the line item detail or is not supported in UNSPSC classification, eg: recycled products. |
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Tips & Tricks
SRS
For analysis and reporting purposes, SRS events should indicate an "awarded" status once the event is completed. The RFx Buyer controls this by adding at least one line item on an event which requires the supplier to enter a bid. When the event closes, the RFx Buyer should complete the scenario, recommend a supplier, and make an award. This will update the status to "awarded". |
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Meet the Team
Justin Sullivan
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Justin Sullivan officially joined the P200 team in March to lead the Sourcing and Commodity Management initiative. He has been working with Strategic Sourcing representatives from each campus to develop the UC's strategic sourcing pipeline process and has been managing the selection process to identify consultants to partner with our organization to transform the UC's strategic sourcing capabilities system-wide.
Justin has been the Director of Strategic Sourcing for the combined San Francisco and Berkeley procurement organization since August 2011 and contributed to P200's SRS deployment efforts.
[Read more about Justin] |
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Meet the Team
Parm
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Chris Parmelee (Parm) started in March as our Procurement Systems Analyst and will be instrumental in implementing and supporting all of our Procurement technologies. Having worked in various roles at UCOP for 10 years, Parm has a deep and rich knowledge of the 10 campus UC system, including the IT networks, emerging issues, and campus culture. Parm has a BA in Economics: Business Management from UCSC. He currently lives in his hometown of Oakland, and enjoys creating avant garde food and libation. |
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So long and farewell
We are both saddened and excited to farewell Halley this month. For those who hadn't met Halley, see was the driver behind many of our operational processes such as keeping the Working Smarter site up to date, helping with the newsletter, answering hairy SharePoint questions and so much more!
The P200 Program Analyst position is currently open and in the process of recruitment.
Halley leaves us to start nursing school just down the road from UCOP.
Thank you for all you've contributed to the success of the P200 project and we wish you every success in your chosen career. |
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Sponsor's Corner
Spring has been a busy time for P200. The new Contract Director tool is being tested, Spend Analytics is undergoing a four week intensive classification effort, and Phase II activities for both projects are underway. We will soon kick off our Strategic Sourcing and Performance Management projects bringing the total P200 projects underway to five out of the seven. Additionally, UC staff recently presented two well-received papers at NAEP that highlighted the success of our collaborative efforts, all while the broader UCOP Procurement team settled into a new organizational structure.
UCOP Procurement reorganization
One of the first P200 projects initiated was the alignment of the UCOP procurement organization to deliver services under a new sourcing and commodity management model. This has been my primary focus since coming on board in late January. On March 28th I met with the UCOP team to announce the new UCOP procurement organization framework. This new structure clearly defines key leadership roles and responsibilities, formalizes reporting relationships, and aligns existing UCOP procurement skill sets with our target model. The simplified organization features three key operational areas led by Directors who each report directly to the me as CPO.
P200 Program Management will continue to be led by [Read more]
Strategic Sourcing and Performance Management project kick-off
As we complete our search for a qualified consulting firm to provide system-wide strategic sourcing and performance management support, I would like to take this opportunity to stress that these projects will require considerable time and effort from many procurement staff at the Campuses as well as UCOP. No doubt there will be significant operational burden placed on the campus procurement offices, possibly even more so on the smaller campuses.We will certainly face many challenges over the next year 12-18 months, but by collaborating and fully leveraging the resources and talents of this organization we will construct a world class procurement organization while also building stronger individual career potential through enriched professional development experiences. We at UCOP are committed to the success of P200 so let's roll up our sleeves and prepare to really go to work. At the end of this journey we will surely achieve our goal of $200 million in savings per year.
UC Presents at the National Association of Educational procurement (NAEP) 2013 Annual Conference
Following up stellar presentations at the SciQuest Next Level conference in San Antonio earlier this year, University of California Procurement again displayed its national prominence in Orlando at the NAEP annual meeting. Under the Innovations in Procurement Track, Erin Riley, UCOP and Greg Macway, [Read more]
Bill Cooper
Associate Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer
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 P200 in Action on Campus
Coming soon! Keep your eye out for our new P200 poster. The poster is designed to create awareness of the goals of the P200 program and direct you to additional information.
A more complete picture
In business reviews with key suppliers, UC San Diego typically brings data to the table that helps the supplier become more successful. Spend Analytics has enabled us to more quickly pull market share data along with data that shows departments with significant spend in a given commodity area.
As categorization of the data progresses, we look forward to providing greater levels of detail to the campus and our key suppliers in order to help us make more informed decisions and ensure the successful implementation of competitive contracts.
Todd Adams
Senior Manager, Central Procurement
UCLA's team spirit 
To help build confidence in using SRS to post our RFx events, UCLA hosted a "lunch and learn" where Buyer IVs and above, along with Commodity Managers, Procurement Supervisors and Managers, were walked through the RFP process by a UCLA Buyer in an informal environment.
In total 15 people attended and saw firsthand how straight-forward the RFP process is in SRS. We even learned a few tips such as choosing whether to do a side by side comparison, and the pros and cons of both options.
Our Buyers liked the flexibility of SRS and have implemented a buddy system to support each other as they start using the tool.
Overall the lunch and learn was a great success with four new events in SRS within hours of the session!
Ty Haubrich
UCLA Strategic Sourcing Manager
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Strategic Sourcing / Performance Management Update
We are in final negotiations with a consulting firm who will partner with us over the next 18 months to implement the collaborative strategic sourcing organizational model adopted by the PLC. Working alongside our team, the consultants will assess the current portfolio of system-wide agreements, identify sourcing opportunities, support the delivery of strategic sourcing projects that leverage the new organization and technology capabilities, and develop procurement performance management and reporting capabilities.
An announcement will be made once the engagement is finalized.
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Commodity Update
Leveraging SRS to create seven concurrent health insurance product RFPs
With the 2013 Fall open enrollment around the corner, seven professional services RFP's were released that covered everything from Third Party Administrators (TPA) for self insured programs to traditional health insurance programs to pharmacy benefits to wellness programs. This is the first year that Procurement Services has been an active participant in the process, providing additional expertise in large, cross campus negotiations to ensure UC receives the best outcome for over 238,000 employees across the UC.
In addition to sourcing expertise, we encouraged HR to utilize the SRS tool to facilitate the RFP process. Trying to collect key documents from 25 - 30 RFP evaluators, 16 consultants (across two different firms), and the 30 plus firms responding to the RFP could have been a challenge. By utilizing SRS, we effectively managed the 1,000+ documents and emails which supported the RFP, saving us time and increasing the reliability in collecting the data. SRS is structured to be the full repository for all permanent historical documents supporting the largest and most extensive set of RFP's the UC has ever published at one time.
Alan Moloney
Commodity Team Manager, HR, Professional Services
UC Office of the President |
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Spend Analytics update
Change in nomenclature
Next time you're in Spend Analytics, you will notice that we have standardized the term "suppliers" to encompass vendors and suppliers. In doing this, we not only make the views more consistent, we better reflect the strategic partnerships we continue to develop with our suppliers.
30/30 Search Functions
Over 70% of Spend Analytics users attended our latest webinar on Search Functions in our 30/30 Continuing Education series. Join us next month for Custom Reports to see what you're missing out on.
Classification consolidation
Spend Radar is onsite at UCOP for a month long strategic and focused effort on improving the spend classification and vendor normalization. Spend Radar is working closely with the UCOP Commodity Managers to obtain feedback and to create rules that better classify the data to UNSPSC codes. Updates will be visible at the beginning of each week so there will be noticeable improvement as the month progresses.
Spend Analytics Phase II
Thank you to all who participated in the Spend Analytics Phase II requirements gathering survey. We clearly heard that the majority of respondents find the tool easy to use though respondents would like more time in the tool to become more confident its functionality. We continue to analyze the results and will have more to report next month.
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Need help? We've added new information to our help guide. Check it out here or in the tool. |
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Sourcing Technology Update
RFXtra Continuing Education
We are pleased to announce the launch of RFXtra, a continuing education series for our Sourcing Technology projects. Starting May 28th, these 30 minute webinars will provide a focused demonstration highlighting best practice and tips and tricks on one Sourcing Technology topic. The first RFXtra will hone in on Items.
Additional details along with an invitation to join this, and future webinars, will be emailed soon.
Contract Director and Repository testing
Contract Director Round 1 testing is underway as of Wednesday, April 24th. Round 1 testing will be completed in three weeks followed by Round 2 testing for two weeks. Each campus has at least one representative participating in the testing. The testing schedule can be found here. If you have any questions, please contact your Contract Director CPR. |
By the numbers
73 RFx events executed to date in SRS
UC Sourcing Technology support email address change, effective immediately
As our Procurement systems grow in number and capability, we have implemented a formal electronic ticketing support system to help us effectively manage, and respond to, the volume of questions. The system we have selected is Zendesk. In order to make the transition, we will need to update our support email address to support@ucprocure.zendesk.com.
Additionally, supplier support is now provided by UCOP instead of SciQuest. We believe this will give suppliers a quicker response and a better experience. Suppliers can reach us directly through supplier@ucprocure.zendesk.com. [Read more] |
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Have a Question?
Need some help?
Want to refresh your skills?
Wondering about something else?
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The next P200 newsletter will be released on June 7th |
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