University of Pennsylvania expands user adoption with change management

Penn’s procurement group supports more than 2,000 users from across the University and represents close to $1B in annual spend. While each area is responsible for managing its own procurement requirements, Purchasing Services (about 16 employees) is responsible for helping the University establish procurement and sourcing best practices.

Penn’s Purchasing Services’ vision is to be the leader in higher education procurement, as measured by the value delivered to their community through efficient procurement processes and highly effective sourcing solutions. To achieve this vision, Purchasing Services meets with its stakeholders on a monthly basis.

The Purchasing Services team has always been an early adopter of procurement technology. For several years, the University has used Corcentric Sourcing to electronically publish its RFPs and run sourcing events to more than 850 suppliers.

Expanding the impact, reach, and use of technology is a constant challenge requiring training and change management of stakeholders. RHS’s old process involved extensive meetings, duplicated efforts, and cumbersome manual tasks.

Identifying Additional Savings and Gaining Back Valuable Hours

RHS and other University departments involved earlier in the RFP process, Purchasing Services maximizes time by reducing resources required to manually transfer documents into Corcentric Sourcing, identified savings for a long-standing service resulting in annual savings of $70,000 – 25% of the RHS contract value, and increased published RFPs by 30 percent.

Additional benefits to both the Purchasing Services team and internal customers include:

• Streamlined editing process
• Improved operational efficiencies
• Increased cost savings opportunities
• Improved adoption rate and
  ROI of Corcentric Sourcing at the departmental level

Purchasing Services has also produced a more competitive environment for Penn’s suppliers and service providers, resulting in greater cost savings and improved contract compliance.

“I’ve used a number of well-known sourcing platforms in the industry prior to joining Penn,” says Brent A. Friedman, Strategic Sourcing Manager, IT Commodity at UPenn. “Corcentric Sourcing is the most user and supplier-friendly eSourcing tool I’ve leveraged for my competitive bidding needs.”