UPST Projects

Starting January 21, 2025, all sourcing and bid support requests will be managed through the BuyWays system. This transition enhances workflow efficiency, transparency, and overall user experience for sourcing requests. In addition, this consolidation makes BuyWays the one-stop system for all procurement-related processes across UMass.

The UMass Administration and Finance stakeholders, Policy Harmonization Team, across the system have been working on the harmonization of many procurement-related policies over the last two years. 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.

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. 

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.

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.  

The UPST and your campus MRO Advisory Team have partnered with the Massachusetts Higher Education Consortium (MHEC) to consolidate our purchasing power and go to the market to identify preferred suppliers that meet UMass' need for competitively sourced goods in alignment with Massachusetts law, discounted pricing, quick access and timely delivery of goods purchased.

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.

UPST partnered with UITS and campus CIOs to drive the rationalization of the UMass system IT Value Added Resellers (VAR) supplier base into 3 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 3 strategic IT VAR suppliers that UMass has contracted with include CDW-G, GovConnection, and WEI, all of which have done business with the system for years. 

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. 

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!

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.