Caption: Amber Haskell (Senior Director, Economic Inclusion) and James E. Rooney (President & CEO) of the Pacesetters present David Cho and Marty Meehan with the 2024 Champion of the Year Award.
"By utilizing the 5-campus Cores Committee and our UPST Partner, the Cores have visibility to ensure large instrument purchases are leveraging our dollars”
- Susanna Perkins, Director, Research Cores & Operations, Research Core Admin., UMass Chan Medical School
Optimizing Savings and Our Community Impact
The ‘Cheaper” part of the vision focuses on cost optimization and aligning UPST activities to positively impact stakeholders, students, the local community, and staff. Taking each point alone, UPST has saved about $140 million for UMass since its inception while improving diverse supplier spending by almost 130%.
Leveraging the power of UMass to Optimize Cost Savings ($140M by FY24)
UMass has saved approximately $140M through UPST activities, cutting across cost reduction, rebates/discounts, and avoided costs due to improved negotiation activities.
Total Cost Savings
The Total Savings since Inception by Fiscal Year (FY):
- FY20: $11.60 million
- FY21: $22.3 million
- FY22: $53.3 million
- FY23 $25.3 million
- FY24: $27.4 million
To sustain the cost reduction mandate, the team developed a Strategic Planning & Reporting for Campuses - Procurement (SPARC - Pro) tool, which provides insights to campus decision-makers on how their constituents leverage systemwide negotiated contracts (e.g., IT VAR, Executive Search, Airgas, etc.) that maximize benefits to the UMass system.
Driving Community Engagement Through Supplier Diversity
Regarding supplier diversity, UMass isn’t just aiming high—we’re going for the gold. Supplier Diversity drives innovation and strengthens our community, making it a cornerstone of our procurement strategy. We actively seek partnerships with businesses owned by minorities, women, veterans, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people with disabilities. Building these relationships brings fresh ideas and supports economic growth in diverse communities.
Supplier diversity is not just a program but a core value enshrined in the Board of Trustees Procurement Policy, reflecting UMass’ dedication to inclusivity. Overall, our performance has been tremendous, with both an increase in distinct diverse suppliers we worked with and the volume of spending from FY20 to FY24.
In addition to the above achievement for UMass, one should note the following:
- Actual numbers for the trend depicted above for both total spending and count of diverse suppliers from FY20 to FY24
- Spend: $44.3M(FY20) vs. $119M (FY24)
- Diverse Supplier Count: 643 (FY20) vs. 1013 (FY24)
- Working with a third-party enrichment company greatly improved our visibility to how to drive UMass supplier diversity agenda.
- Although UMass does not track spending with Small Business Enterprise (SBE), we spent $186M (2174 vendors) with diverse businesses with SBE certification.
- Subcontractor (tier 2) diverse supplier spend was $4.07M from 7 vendors in FY24; this is the next frontier regarding the UMass Supplier Diversity program.
To learn more about the UMass Supplier Diversity Program and how we are making strides, visit the Supplier Diversity Program page.