To achieve our mission of "Better, Faster, Cheaper", the UPST is collaborating with various partners both within the President's Office and our various campuses on various initiatives. These projects span automation, technology adoption, process improvement, policy harmonization, and a whole lot more.

Visit each of the sections below to read up on our ongoing projects!

Process Improvement/Cost Savings

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Project Met 3.0: Transforming the Contract Process

Discover the exciting transformations in store for the contract process. Our upcoming project promises enhanced efficiency, automation, and valuable insights, ensuring a streamlined and improved experience for all.

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Commodity Code Harmonization

The BuyWays Commodity Code structure is being harmonized and cleaned to reflect the goods and services that we purchase. The new structure will direct you to use the appropriate account code based on the automatic (catalog) and chosen (non-catalog) commodity code. 

 

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Executive Recruitment Firm Program

The Executive Recruitment Firm Program empowers departments with a rich selection of firms to tap into when seeking exceptional talent for executive and leadership roles.

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Managed Print Services Optimization

The UMass – SupplyLogic partnership is an extension of the work being done by the campus marketing and procurement teams. The model allows UMass to focus on our strategic, high-value activities, while leveraging a specialized partner to manage the execution of those strategies.  

Policy Harmonization

The UMass Administration and Finance stakeholders, Policy Harmonization Team, across the system have been working on the harmonization of many procurement-related policies (Procurement, Business & Travel Expense (B&TE), and Travel) over the last 18-24 months. The Procurement and  B&TE policies are ready for deployment and we hope you can read up on the policies and their associated administrative standards by clicking on each initiative below.

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Business & Travel Expense (BTE)

The Policy Harmonization Team has consolidated the multiple business expense and travel policies residing on each campus into a single policy for the UMass System – Business & Travel Expense (B&TE). These standards provide guidelines for processes and approval requirements for: allowable and non-allowable non-travel expenditures, non-travel food and beverage expenditures, business meetings and events with alcohol (non-travel related), mileage reimbursement, cell phones, and more.

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Procurement Policy & Administrative Standards

The Procurement Policy and Administrative Standards update focused on clarifying the role of UPST, contract execution, and entrenchment of Supplier Diversity.  The administrative standards provide clarity on procurement operation, and requirements while aggregating the disparate procurement process information in one location.

Completed Projects

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IT VAR

The UPST partnered with UITS and campus CIOs to drive the rationalization of the UMass system IT Value Added Resellers (VAR) supplier base into 4 strategic contracts. With over 10,000 active IT VAR suppliers, the initiative aimed to rein in the number of active information technology suppliers to ensure accountability, compliance, and proactive supplier management. The 4 strategic IT VAR suppliers that UMass has contracted with includes, Gov Connection, Whalley, WEI, and CDW-G, all of which have been doing business with the system for some years now. 

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BuyWays Release 1.0: Guided Buying, Change Orders, and NBJ

The UPST worked with your campus stakeholders over a period of 7 months to automate the No-Bid Justification (NBJ) process, and Change Order process while defining a process to operationalize the use of enhanced purchase orders (PO) to contract services contracts of less than $50K in BuyWays. BuyWays Release 1.0 is an umbrella name for this project and it was successfully deployed system-wide between July and August of 2021.

Motto: Ease of use and efficiency. 

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Enhancements to the Contract Request Process (TCM Phase 2)

It has been almost one year since the Contract Request process was deployed in BuyWays. Since this time, we have received feedback from you on ways to improve the process. The updated Contract Request form and process will go live on Monday, January 30, 2022!

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Supplier Onboarding & Self-Service Process

The Supplier Onboarding & Self-Service process in BuyWays is being revamped and launches starting February 2023! The new form will place UPST at the front of the Supplier process. All it takes is information from the requester and UPST will do the rest in vetting and inviting your supplier.